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IN   MEMORY 


ROBERT  C  WINTHROP 


DANIEL  GOODWIN 


DELIVERED  BEFORE  THE    CHICAGO    LITERARY  CLUB,   NOVEMBER    36, 

1888,  AND  THE  CHICAGO  HISTORICAL  SOCIETY 

NOVEMBER  20,    1894 


CHICAGO 
PRIVATELY    PRINTED 

1894 


ROBERT    C.  WINTHROP. 


IN   MEMORY 


ROBERT  C.  WINTHROP 


BY 

DANIEL  GOODWIN 


BEFORE  THE    CHICAGO    LITERARY  CLUB,   NOVEMBER    26,    1888 

AND  THE  CHICAGO   HISTORICAL  SOCIETY 

NOVEMBER  20,    1894 

'   ''      ',    '       >  J  i  J  ,  i     >  J ,  J     ,  -J     , 


CHICAGO 

PRIVATELY    PRINTED 

1894 


R.    R.   DONNELLEY   &   SONS   CO.,  CHICAGO 


I'i  '.      .'    \     ■ 


•    ^-  I'c"^ :     [  ,\ 


CONTENTS. 


Introduction,    -            -            -            -            -            -  7 

Essay  on  "  Our  Supreme  Eulogist   Before  the 

Chicago  Literary  Club,  Nov.  26,  1888,        -  9 

Genealogical  Tree,   -            -            -            -            -  48 

Memorial  Tribute  at  the  Annual  Meeting  of 

THE  Chicago  Historical  Society,  Nov.  10, 1894,  49 

List  of  Winthrop's  Eulogies,                -            -  51 

WiNTHROP's  Estimate  of  Abraham  Lincoln,      -  54 

In  Re  The  Dearborns,    -            -            -            -  55 

In  Re  Edwin  C.  Larned,       -            -            -            -  57 

Letters,         ------  59 

Winthrop's  Address  on  The  Flag  of  Our  Union,  62 


INTRODUCTION. 


The  first  thought  which  occurred  to  me  when 
I  learned  of  the  death  of  Robert  C.  Winthrop 
was  the  great  Eulogist  has  surrendered,  and  all 
the  scholars  of  the  English  and  French  speaking 
nations  of  the  world  owe  his  memory  a  return  in 
kind. 

Webster  and  Everett,  Choate  and  Phillips 
were  his  rivals  in  popular  oratory;  Bancroft  and 
Prescott,  Ellis  and  Frothingham,  Parkman  and 
Motley  were  his  rivals  as  historians;  Story  and 
Quincy,  Holmes  and  Lowell,  vied  with  him 
in  graceful  and  courteous  table  talk  and  post- 
prandial eloquence:  but  I  know  of  no  record  of 
any  man  who  has  had  such  opportunities  *and 
who  has  so  perfectly  satisfied  the  hopes  and 
tender  anxieties  of  relatives  and  friends  in  pro- 
nouncing fitting  eulogies  upon  the  great  dead  of 
America.  Nor  has  he  been  the  eulogist  of  Amer- 
icans alone.  Connected  by  blood  with  some  of 
the  noblest  families  in  England  he  has,  since 
1847,  ^^^^  acquainted  with  the  foremost  men  of 
Great  Britain  and  France,  and  as  President  of  the 
Massachusetts  Historical  Society  and  chief  trustee 
of  George  Peabody  he  has  told  the  story  of  most 
of  the  great  men  who  have  been  gathered  among 
the  stars  for  the  last  fifty  years. 
7 


8  INTRODUCTION. 

The  numerous  societies,  historical,  religious 
and  philanthropic,  of  which  he  was  a  member; 
the  city  of  his  birth  and  death ;  the  congress 
of  the  country  where  he  was  once  Speaker  and 
Senator  will,  in  due  time  and  with  proper  ceremony, 
weave  for  him  those  laurel  leaves  which  the  Muse 
of  history' prepares  for  the  great  of  earth.  In  the 
meantime  I  present  to  a  few  of  my  own  friends 
the  tribute  I  prepared  for  Mr.  Winthrop  in  1888 
for  the  Chicago  Literary  Club,  with  the  addition 
of  an  appendix  illustrating  possibly  the  man  and 
his  surroundings  confident  in  the  hope  that  they 
will  appreciate  them  as  the  humble  tribute  of 
one  who  most  highly  honored  his  subject,  and 
was   grateful  for  his  friendship. 

If  any  of  these  pages  shall  drift  from  the 
"  world's  White  City  "  to  our  Eastern  seaboard, 
let  it  be  remembered  by  those  who  may  peruse 
them,  that  they  are  the  spontaneous  tribute  of  a 
western  friend  who  is  alone  responsible  for  the 
choice  of  subjects  considered,  for  the  genealogical 
chart  constructed  entirely  from  material  in  our 
own  Historical  and  Newberry  Libraries  and  for 
the  meagre  glance  at  Mr.  Winthrop's  political 
career,  which  has  been  almost  entirely  ignored  in 
deference  to  the  warmth  of  sentiments  felt  by 
so  many  of  his  contemporaries  and  their  successors. 


The  following  Essay  was  read  before  the  Chi- 
cago Literary  Club  on  the  26th  of  November^ 
1888,  Mr.  James  L.  High,  President;  Mr, 
Henry  S.  3outell,  Secretary  pro  tern. 


OUR   SUPREME   EULOGIST. 


When  Robert  C.  Winthrop,  as  president  of 
the  Massachusetts  Historical  Society,  had  pro- 
nounced his  eulogy  upon  the  memory  of  his 
associate,  John  Lothrop  Motley,  he  called  upon 
James  Russell  Lowell  to  follow  him.  Mr. 
Lowell  began  in  language  which  has  met  my  eye 
since  my  present  subject  was  chosen,  but  which 
seemed  to  me  very  expressive  and  significant. 
He  said,  "  Mr.  President,  you  assign  me  a  duty  of 
w^hose  danger  you  only  are  unconscious,  in  asking 
me  to  add  anything  to  the  w^ords  of  one  who  by 
common  consent  is  a  master  in  the  perilous 
oratory  of  commemoration." 

Perilous  and  difficult  indeed  many  of  us  have 
found  it,  and  it  may  not  be  labor  lost  to  occupy 
the  hour  assigned  to  us  to-night  in  a  brief  study 
of  the  life,  the  works,  the  character  and  the  style 
of  that  man  who  has  been  so  by  common  consent, 
in  the  chief  home  of  our  literature  and  arts, 
denominated  the  master  of  eulogy. 

Who  of  us  has  not  been  led  into  that  perilous 
walk  by  some  strong  chord  of  sympathy  or  affec- 
tion ?  Certainly  no  clergyman  has  ever  escaped 
it,  either  as  a  duty  or  a  choice,  and  rare  indeed 
are  the  lawyers,  or  physicians,  or  artists,  or  men 
of  business,  or  soldiers  surviving  from  the  tented 
9 


lO  ROBERT   C.  WINTHROP. 

field  who  have  not  been  called  upon  to  record 
their  admiration  or  their  love  for  friends  who 
have  fallen  before  them  and  whose  memories 
they  were  not  willing  to  let  die. 

From  the  cradle  of  the  human  race — from  the 
first  green  sod  that  covered  the  stricken  and  life- 
less form  of  the  first  man  to  this  hour,  the  world 
has  been  sounding  and  reverberating  the  eulogies 
of  the  dear  departed.  Poetry  and  music  have 
given  their  perpetual  offering ;  the  flowers  of  the 
field  and  the  garden  have  mutely  expressed  their 
sweet  and  tender  remembrance;  the  orator  and 
historian  have  with  sonorous  sentence  and 
eloquent  illustration  recorded  the  virtues  of  the 
departed. 

Most  of  these  eulogies  have  passed  away  like 
the  flowers  over  which  they  were  spoken,  their 
transient  loveliness  all  gone  with  the  occasion  for 
which  they  grew;  and  when  we  have  found  a 
man  whose  speech  is  golden,  whose  words  of 
eulogy  have  been  set  in  the  volumes  of  our  per- 
manent literature,  and  w^hen  we  find  that  he  has 
said  the  right  things,  at  the  fitting  time  and  place, 
concerning  more  than  a  hundred  of  the 
uncrowned  kings  of  thought,  and  literature,  and 
statesmanship,  covering  more  than  half  of  this 
most  wonderful  of  all  the  centuries  since  the 
world  began,  we  may  well  pause  and  look  a  little 
into  the  sources  and  causes  of  such  marked  excel- 
lence, such  countless  endeavor,  such  perfect  suc- 
cess. 


ROBERT   C.  WINTHROP.  1 1 

I. 

HIS  FAMILY   AND  GENEALOGY. 

When  Thomas  Lindall  Winthrop  married 
EHzabeth  Bowdoin  Temple  in  Boston,  Massa- 
chusetts, July,  1786,  the  wedding  brought 
together  in  one  ancestral  tree  a  very  rare  and 
remarkable  union  of  families;  the  most  rare  and 
most  remarkable  I  have  ever  yet  examined. 

If  you  w^ill  take  the  family  branches  and  con- 
struct them  in  the  ordinary  genealogical  style  into 
a  great  tree,  the  trunk  of  w^hich  shall  be,  if  you 
please,  the  great  orator  who  forms  the  topic  of 
my  essay,  and  call  that  trunk  by  the  name  of 
"  Robert  C.  Winthrop,"  and  from  it  build  up  the 
branches  with  the  names  of  Winthrops,  Temples, 
Bowdoins,  Ervings,  Lyndes,  Portages,  Lindalls, 
Dudleys,  Tyngs  and  Nelsons,  you  will  sound  the 
names  of  men  and  families  marked  for  conspicu- 
ous ability  and  public  services  for  the  last  three 
centuries. 

Enumerating  his  American  ancestry  alone, 
our  subject  is  descended  from  two  Governors 
Winthrop;  from  Chief  Justice  W^ait  Winthrop; 
from  both  Governors  Thomas  and  Joseph 
Dudley;  from  Governor  James  Bowdoin,  of 
Huguenot  blood;  from  Hon.  John  Erving,  one  of 
the  King's  Council  before  the  Revolution ;  from 
Hon.  Edward  Tyng,  one  of  the  King's  Council 
in  1687;  from  Hon.  Simon  Lynde,  the  father  and 
grandfather  of  two  Chief  Justices  Benjamin 
Lynde;    from  Francis  Browne,  the  ancestor  also 


12  ROBERT   C.  WINTHROP. 

of  Justice  Joseph  Story.  His  mother's  father 
was  Sir  John  Temple,  the  friend  of  Frankhn, 
and  son-in-law  of  Gov.  Bowdoin.  Temple  was  a 
kinsman  and  protege  of  the  great  Chatham  and 
the  younger  Pitt,  and  of  the  same  family  with 
Earl  Temple  and  George  Grenville,  the  late 
Lord  Palmerston  and  the  Dukes  of  Buckingham 
and  Chandos,  a  family  distinguished  in  English 
history  for  nineteen  generations. 

These  distinguished  ancestors  have  also 
brought  him  into  collateral  kinship  with  number- 
less families  of  deserved  prominence,  such  as  the 
descendants  of  Alexander  Hamilton,  Governor 
Stuyvesant,  Governor  Sullivan,  the  Amorys  and 
Sears,  Livingstons,  Schuylers  and  Van  Rensse- 
laers. 

II. 
HARVARD  UNIVERSITY. 

To  you,  gentlemen,  who  graduated  from  our 
oldest  University,  the  name  and  fame  of  Mr. 
Winthrop  has  a  peculiar  interest. 

Harvard  University  was  to  him  as  much  an 
inheritance  as  Boston  Common,  or  the  old  State 
House,  or  Faneuil  Hall. 

Indeed  the  University  itself  was  largely 
indebted  for  its  very  existence  to  John  Winthrop, 
who  had  graduated  at  Trinity  College,  Cam- 
bridge, England.  President  Edward  Everett,  at 
the  Harvard  Second  Centennial  in  1836,  repre- 
sented Governor  Winthrop  as  making  the  speech 
which  led  the  legislature  of  the  infant  colony  to 


ROBERT   C.  WINTHROP.  I3 

vote  the  original  endowment  under  which  the 
college  was  established,  and  President  Quincy  in 
his  history  of  the  university  says,  "  Next  to  John 
Harvard,  John  Winthrop,  the  leader  of  the 
Massachusetts  Colony  and  twelve  times  its  elected 
governor,  deserves  grateful  commemoration.  His 
donation  of  books  was  large  and  valuable.  His 
name  and  influence  were  always  given  in  its  sup- 
port. There  is  probably  no  one  to  whose  patron- 
age the  college  was  more  indebted  during  the 
period  of  its  infancy,  weakness  and  dependence." 

Nearly  all  of  his  male  lineal  ancestors  had  grad- 
uated at  Harvard  for  generations,  not  to  mention 
numberless  collaterals.  His  father  was  of  the 
class  of  1780. 

One  of  his  father's  grandfathers,  Francis  Bor- 
land, was  of  the  class  of  1774,  and  another  of  his 
grandfathers,  Governor  James  Bowdoin,  was  of 
the  class  of  1745,  and  among  his  other  lineal  an- 
cestors were  Timothy  Lindall  of  1695,  Governor 
Thomas  Dudley  of  1651,  and  Governor  Joseph 
Dudley  of  1665,  and  John  Tyng  of  1691. 

When  Mr.  Winthrop  entered  Harvard,  in  1823, 
we  were  fairly  started  on  the  up-grade  of  letters 
and  "learning,  following  our  second  war  of  inde- 
pendence which  terminated  so  gloriously  in  18 15, 
and  among  his  college-mates  were  numbers  who 
have  contributed  to  the  peerless  position  occupied 
by  our  country  to-day. 

Graduating  at  nineteen  years  of  age,  the  third 
in  a  class  of  fifty-three,  and  with  a  commence- 
ment oration  which  was  soon  put  into  the  school- 
books  as  a  model  of  English  eloquence,  he  showed 


14  ROBERT   C.  WINTHROP. 

from  the  very  start  that  his  family  wealth  and  dis- 
tinction were  not  crutches  to  be  leaned  on,  but  that 
he  had  inherited  the  glorious  aspiration  to  toil  and 
labor  for  the  good  and  glory  of  mankind. 

Some  of  his  speeches  at  the  alumni  meetings 
have  been  reported  and  published,  and  are  replete 
with  interesting  reminiscences  of  the  great  men 
who  had  been  connected  with  the  university  as 
officers  or  students  in  his  day. 

At  the  alumni  meeting  in  1852,  he  said  :  "  We 
are  here  to  bless  the  place  of  our  earliest  and  best 
opportunities.  We  come  one  and  all  to  bear  our 
united  testimony  to  the  value  of  this  venerated  in- 
stitution. We  come  to  bring  whatever  laurels  we 
have  acquired,  whatever  treasures  we  have  accu- 
mulated to  adorn  its  hallowed  shrines.  We  come 
to  pay  fresh  homage  to  the  memory  of  our  fathers 
for  having  founded  and  reared  it.  We  come 
to  renew  our  tribute  of  gratitude  to  its  earlier 
and  its  later  benefactors.  We  come  to  thank 
God  for  having  prospered  and  blessed  it.  And 
we  come,  above  all,  to  acknowledge  our  own 
personal  indebtedness  to  it  and  to  make  public 
recognition  of  the  manifold  obligations  and  re- 
sponsibilities to  God  and  man  which  rest  upon  us 
all  by  reason  of  the  opportunities  and  advantages 
which  we  have  here  enjoyed. 

"  We  arrogate  nothing  to  ourselves  in  the  way 
of  distinction  or  privilege.  We  are  not  blind  to 
the  fact  that  there  are  those  around  us,  who  have 
enjoyed  none  of  our  academic  opportunities,  who 
have  outstripped  not  a  few  of  us,  in  the  practical 
pursuits  of  literature  and  of  life.      We  do  not  for- 


ROBERT   C.  WINTHROP.  15 

get  that  there  are  some  of  them  who  have  sur- 
passed us  all  in  the  highest  walks  of  art,  of 
science,  and  of  patriotic  statesmanship.  Honor, 
honor  this  day  from  this  assembled  multitude  of 
scholars  to  the  self-made,  self-educated  men  who 
have  adorned  our  country's  history.  Honor  to  the 
common  schools  of  our  land,  from  which  such 
men  have  derived  all  which  they  have  not  owed 
to  their  own  industry,  their  own  energy,  their  own 
God-given  genius. 

"  Bowditch,  Fulton,  Franklin,  Washington  ;" 
when  will  any  American  university  be  able  to  point 
to  names  upon  its  catalogue  of  alumni  which  may 
be  likened  to  these  names  for  the  originality  and 
profoundness  of  the  researches,  for  the  practical 
importance  of  the  accomplishments,  for  the  gran- 
deur and  sublimity  of  the  inventions  and  discov- 
eries, or  for  the  noble  achievements  and  glorious 
institutions  with  which  they  are  indissolubly  asso- 
ciated ?  Well  may  we  say,  as  we  proudly  inscribe 
their  names  upon  our  honorary  rolls,  '  They  were 
wanting  to  our  glory,  we  were  not  wanting  to 
theirs.' 

"Nor  are  we  here  to  indulge  in  any  invidious 
comparisons  between  our  own  Harvard  and  other 
universities  and  colleges  in  the  state  or  in  the  nation. 
It  is  pardonable  to  love  our  own  mother  better 
than  other  people's  mothers.  It  is  natural  that 
we  should 

*  Be  to  her  faults  a  little  blind, 
Be  to  her  virtues  very  kind.* 

"  Indeed,  as  we  run  our  eye  over  her  long  list 


l6  ROBERT   C.    WINTHROP. 

of  children  and  see  what  a  glorious  company  she 
has  sent  forth  into  every  field  of  Christian  service, 
and  follow  her  along  her  starry  way  for  more 
than  two  centuries,  we  might  be  almost  pardoned 
for  forgetting  that  she  has  or  ever  had  any  faults. 
Could  we  but  see  something  of  a  higher  moral  dis- 
cipline, something  of  a  deeper  religious  sentiment, 
something  of  a  stronger  spiritual  influence  min- 
gling with  the  sound  scholarship  which  pervades 
her  halls  and  giving  something  of  a  fresher  and 
fuller  significance  to  her  ancient  motto, '  Christoet 
Ecclesiae^  there  would  be  little  or  nothing  more 
to  be  desired  in  her  condition." 

I  have  quoted  but  the  prelude  to  his  oration  on 
the  obligations  and  responsibilities  of  educated 
men.  One  other  page  of  it  seems  to  me  to  so 
fully  show  forth  the  vital  principle  and  the  style 
of  the  man  that  I  cannot  forbear  quoting  it : 

"  How  much  better,  and  purer,  and  nobler  a  lit- 
erature might  we  not  have,  and  how  much  more 
just  and  elevated  a  public  sentiment  as  its  result, 
if  every  man  who  is  educated  to  the  use  of  the  pen 
or  of  the  tongue  could  be  made  to  feel  within  him- 
self, as  he  sits  down  to  his  desk  or  rises  to  the 
rostrum,  'The  word  that  I  write  or  that  I  speak 
to-day  is  not  for  the  moment  or  for  myself  alone. 
It  is  not  mine  to  minister  merely  to  my  own 
pleasure,  to  my  own  profit,  to  my  own  fame.  It 
is  not  mine  to  pander  to  some  popular  delusion, 
to  fan  some  popular  prejudice,  to  flatter  some  pop- 
ular favorite,  or  to  adorn  some  plausible  falsehood. 
It  is  to  produce  an  influence  far  beyond  that 
which   it  immediately   proposes.      It   is   to  enter. 


ROBERT   C.  WINTHROP.  17 

somewhere,  in  a  greater  or  less  degree,  into  the 
very  springs  and  issues  of  human  action.  It  may 
influence  individuals.  It  may  influence  masses. 
It  cannot  rest  indifferent.  It  cannot  return  unto 
me  empty.  It  will  mingle  with  the  great  current 
of  public  opinion  in  some  part  of  its  course  where 
it  winds  through  some  quiet  valley,  or  takes  its 
way  beneath  some  cottage  window,  if  not  where 
it  foams  and  roars  around  some  splendid  capital  or 
some  mighty  metropolis.  This  very  word  which 
I  speak  or  write  to-day  may  rouse  up  a  resolute 
human  soul  to  a  newer  and  better  life,  or  it  may 
turn  back  some  timid  and  wavering  spirit  from  its 
truest  and  best  ends,  unsettle  its  faith,  unship  its 
anchor,  and  leave  it  wrecked  for  time  and  for  eter- 
nity. It  may  stir  the  breast  of  a  mighty  nation  to 
the  maintenance  of  law  or  the  vindication  of  Hb- 
erty ;  or  it  may  stimulate  and  infuriate  it  to  the 
overthrow  of  the  noblest  institutions,  in  a  mad  pur- 
suit of  impracticable  philanthropies  and  reforms. 
It  may  elevate  and  ennoble  the  hopes,  and  views, 
and  aims  of  mankind,  and  advance  the  cause  of 
peace  on  earth  and  good-will  among  men;  or  it 
may  blow  up  the  smouldering  embers  of  interna- 
tional strife,  and  kindle  a  conflagration  which 
shall  wrap  a  world  in  flames.  I  am,  I  must  be, 
responsible  for  the  result." 

Those  of  you  who  have  had  the  privilege  of 
visiting  the  Memorial  Hall  and  Sanders'  Theatre 
in  Cambridge,  may  feel  interested  in  recognizing 
Mr.  Winthrop's  aid  in  starting  those  beautiful 
buildings.  On  the  17th  July,  1857,  (Vol. 
II,    354.)     he     presided    at    the    Alumni    meet- 


l8  ROBERT   C.  WINTHROP. 

ing,  and  after  eloquently  praising  the  host  of 
laborers  who  were  there  trained  up  and  sent  forth 
into  every  field  and  vineyard  of  church  and  of 
state,  of  theology,  medicine,  law,  literature, 
science,  philosophy,  commerce,  legislation,  philan- 
thropy and  patriotism,  he  expressed  a  longing  for 
some  ample  and  commodious  hall  for  the  secular 
services  and  festivals  of  the  university. 

He  said,  "  I  envy  the  individual  name  which 
shall  be  inscribed  on  such  a  building.  I  have 
sometimes  ventured  to  cherish  the  hope  that  the 
Alumni  as  an  Association  might  be  willing  and 
able  to  undertake  the  work,  and  that  a  stately  and 
commodious  hall  like  the  Senate  house  at  Old 
Cambridge  or  the  Theatre  at  Oxford  might  be  seen 
standing  on  some  appropriate  spot  of  the  college 
grounds  bearing  on  its  front,  'The  Alumni  of 
Harvard  to  their  *-  Alma  Mater,''''''  where  the  exhi- 
bitions, and  Class  days,  and  Commencements  of 
the  University  might  find  worthy  accommodations ; 
where  the  living  alumni  might  hold  their  anniver- 
sary festivals  and  where  the  memorials  of  the  dis- 
tinguished dead  might  find  a  fit  gallery  for  their 
display." 

Within  forty-eight  hours  after  Mr.  Winthrop's 
speech  was  reported,  Mr.  Charles  Sanders,  of  the 
class  of  1802,  started  the  scheme  to  which  he 
ultimately  gave  more  than  $60,000  and  by  his  ef- 
forts greatly  aided  in  procuring  that  remarkable 
building. 


ROBERT  C.  WINTHROP.         19 

III. 
MR.  WINTHROP,  THE  STATESMAN. 

Coming  upon  the  historic  stage  with  the 
widest  range  of  distinguished  ancestors,  our  sub- 
ject was  fortunate  in  the  time  and  place  of  his  ad- 
vent. He  was  born  in  Boston,  on  the  12th  of 
May,  1809,  in  the  house  occupied  by  his  father, 
Lieutenant-Governor  Winthrop,  and  belonging  to 
James  Bowdoin,  minister  to  Spain  and  patron  of 
Bowdoin  College.  He  attended  the  Latin  school 
on  School  Street  w^here  the  Parker  House  now 
stands  (which  was  kept  by  Samuel  Greeley  the 
father  of  our  genial  brother  Samuel  S.  Greeley), 
and  he  here  won  the  Franklin  medal  and  a  gold 
medal  for  a  Latin  poem. 

After  graduating  at  Harvard  in  1828  he  studied 
law  under  Daniel  Webster,  and  was  admitted  to  the 
bar  in  1831.  On  the  23d  of  October,  1833,  when 
twenty-four  years  old,  on  behalf  of  the  young  men 
of  Boston,  he  made  the  welcoming  speech  to  Henry 
Clay  at  the  Tremont,  and  indicated  the  cardinal 
principles  which  revealed  the  needle  of  that  polit- 
ical compass  by  which  he,  and  almost  he  alone, 
has  been  guided  for  more  than  half  a  century. 
Few  indeed  of  his  contemporaries  or  his  succes- 
sors but  have  been  led  by  some  influence,  or  forced 
by  some  circumstances,  to  change  their  course  or 
their  principles,  but  a  close  examination  of  the  rec- 
ord of  Mr.  Winthrop  from  1833  to  1888  will  show 
the  same  old  conservative  Whig,  devoted  to  the 
Constitution    and   the  Union,  opposed  to  slavery 


20  ROBERT   C.  WINTHROP. 

wherever  the  Constitution  permitted  opposition, 
opposed  everywhere  to  its  extension,  and  in  favor 
of  universal  education,  proper  protection  to  our 
trade  and  manufactures,  and  the  largest  possible 
development  of  internal  improvements. 

In  1834  he  was  elected  to  the  Massachusetts 
house,  and  in  1835  ^^  made  a  speech  remarkable 
for  its  eloquence,  its  fire,  its  lofty  spirit  of  liberal- 
ity and  justice  in  favor  of  compensating  the  Cath- 
olics for  the  destruction  of  the  Ursuline  convent 
in  Charleston  by  a  mob.  (Vol.  I,  p  174.)  He  was 
at  this  time  and  for  many  years  an  earnest  sup- 
porter of  the  Boston  militia  companies,  which  by 
their  close  connection  with  the  voters  are  the  bul- 
warks of  civil  liberty  and  order.  He  was  captain 
of  the  Boston  Light  Infantry,  lieutenant  of  the 
Ancient  and  Honorable  Artillery  Company,  and 
on  the  staff  of  three  successive  Governors,  John 
Davis,  Samuel  T.  Armstrong  and  Edward 
Everett. 

In  December,  1838,  he  delivered  an  address  be- 
fore the  Boston  Lyceum  on  Free  Schools  and 
Free  Governments,  taking  advanced  ground  upon 
the  importance  of  political  education,  holding 
"  that  children  should  be  educated  as  those  by 
whom  the  destinies  of  the  Nation  are  one  day  to 
be  wielded,  and  free  schools  cherished  as  places  in 
which  those  destinies  are  even  now  to  be  woven." 
He  has  inculcated  the  same  principles  for  fifty 
years,  and  he,  more  than  any  man,  stamped  them 
upon  the  great  mind  of  General  Grant,  whom  he 
had  brought  into  the  board  of  trustees  of  the  Pea- 
body  fund,  and  had  the  pleasure  of  reading  that 


ROBERT   C.  WINTHROP.  21 

great  hero's  declaration  at  the  army  reunion  in 
1875,  in  Iowa,  when  General  Grant  said,  "  Let  us 
labor  for  the  security  of  free  thought,  free  speech, 
free  press,  pure  morals,  unfettered  religious  senti- 
ment, and  equal  rights  and  privileges  for  all  men, 
irrespective  of  nationality,  color  or  religion ;  en- 
courage free  schools,  and  resolve  that  neither  State 
nor  Nation  shall  support  any  institution  save  those 
where  every  child  may  get  a  common-school  edu- 
cation unmixed  with  any  atheistic,  pagan,  or  secta- 
rian teaching." 

In  1839  Mr.  Winthrop's  reputation  outgrew 
its  local  celebrity  at  Boston,  and  he  delivered  an 
address  at  New  York  City  in  December  on  the 
"  Pilgrim  Fathers,"  which  gave  evidence  of  his 
full  appreciation  of  the  wonderful  work  done  by 
his  forefathers  and  that  the  eternal  fitness  of 
things  demanded  great,  permanent  and  national 
work  from  himself.  He  had  been  a  member  of 
the  Massachusetts  house  for  five  years,  and  had 
the  honor  of  being  elected  its  Speaker  at  an 
earlier  age  than  any  one  before  or  since.  He  had 
been  married  and  given  hostages  to  fortune  in  the 
shape  of  two  sons,  who  still  survive — a  solace  to 
his  old  age. 

In  1840  the  name  and  fame  of  Mr.  Winthrop 
became  the  property  of  the  nation.  With  the 
ardor  of  a  youth  of  thirty-one  and  the  concen- 
trated energies  of  as  good  Puritan  and  Huguenot 
blood  as  ever  flowed,  with  the  eloquence  of  a 
Massachusetts  patriot  and  the  well-balanced  judg- 
ment of  a  disciple  of  Washington  and  Franklin, 
he  went  into  the  campaign  of   1840  with  General 


22  ROBERT   C.  WINTHROP. 

Harrison  and  was  triumphantly  elected  to  Con- 
gress as  sole  Representative  from  Boston. 

In  this  connection  it  may  be  well  to  state  Mr. 
Winthrop's  understanding  of  the  creed  of  the 
Whig  party,  because  they  have  been  the  princi- 
ples upon  which  he  has  acted  all  his  life. 

In  his  interesting  and  instructive  eulogy  upon 
Henry  Clay,  in  August,  1879,  ^f^er  he  entered 
upon   his  seventy-first  year,  Mr.   Winthrop  said: 

"What  was  this  Whig  party  which  he  led  so 
gallantly,  before  disappointed  ambition,  and 
inconsiderate  philanthropy,  and  headlong  fanati- 
cism and  secret  know-nothing  lodges,  and  corrupt 
coalitions  at  one  end  of  the  Union  conspired  with 
mad  and  monstrous  schemes  in  the  interest  of 
African  slavery  at  the  other  end  to  draw  off  so 
many  of  its  members  into  new  ranks,  and  doom 
it  to  a  lingering  death?  What  was  the  party  of 
which  Henry  Clay  and  Daniel  Webster  were  so 
long  the  shining  lights,  and  of  which  Abraham 
Lincoln  Was  so  long  one  of  the  luminaries? 

"It  was  a  constitutional  union  party,  which 
regarded  the  union  of  the  States  and  the  Federal 
Constitution  as  the  only  formal  condition  and 
bond  of  that  Union,  as  things  to  be  reverenced 
and  maintained  at  all  hazards.  It  was  a  law  and 
order  party,  which  tolerated  no  revolutionary  or 
riotous  processes  of  reform.  It  was  a  party  of 
principle  and  purity,  which  consented  to  no  cor- 
ruption or  traffic  as  a  means  of  securing  office  or 
success.  It  was  a  conservative  party,  and  yet  a 
party  of  progress  which  looked  to  the  elevation 
of  American  labor   and  the  advancement  of  our 


ROBERT    C.  WINTHROP.  23 

national  welfare  by  a  discriminating  adjustment 
and  an  equitable  collection  of  duties  on  imports, 
by  an  honest  currency,  by  a  liberal  administration 
of  the  public  lands,  and  by  needful  appropriations 
from  time  to  time  for  the  improvement  of  rivers 
and  harbors.  It  w^as  a  party  of  peace — domestic 
peace  and  foreign  peace — opposed  to  every  law- 
less scheme  of  encroachment  or  aggrandizement, 
at  home  or  abroad,  and  studiously  avoiding  what- 
ever might  occasion  internal  commotion  or 
external  conflict.  It  was  above  all  things  a 
national  party^  extending  over  the  whole 
country  and  systematically  renouncing  and  repu- 
diating all  merely  sectional  organizations  or 
issues." 

Will  it  not  somewhat  puzzle  the  students  of  our 
next  century  to  understand  how  it  was  that  a 
small  body  of  Free-soilers  combining  with  the 
Conservative  Democracy  of  Massachusetts  could 
be  able  to  defeat  such  a  man  as  Winthrop,  so  true 
to  the  principles  prevailing  in  his  state?  When 
they  had  elected  Mr.  Sumner  his  successor,  he  was 
forced  to  plant  himself  practically  upon  the  plat- 
form of  Mr.  Winthrop.  He  said  (works  of 
Sumner,  Vol.  2,  p.  429)  : 

"We  propose  to  wait  and  work  patiently  under 
and  through  the  Constitution  that  our  purposes 
may  be  peaceably  accomplished  in  the  spirit  of 
that  instrument  and  of  our  fathers.  We  are  con- 
stitutionalists and  Unionists.  We  reverence  the 
Constitution  of  the  United  States  and  seek  to 
guard  it  against  infractions,  believing  that  under 
the  Constitution  Freedom  can  be  best  preserved. 


24  ROBERT   C.  WINTHROP. 

We  reverence  the  union  of  the  States,  believing 
that  the  peace,  happiness  and  welfare  of  all  de- 
pend upon  this  blessed  bond." 

Nay,  the  Republican  party  itself  was  obliged  to 
stand  upon  Mr.  Winthrop's  platform,  and  after 
Mr.  Lincoln  was  elected  President,  solemn  reso- 
lutions were  adopted  by  us,  in  and  out  of  Con- 
gress, pledging  our  party  not  to  interfere  with 
slavery  in  the  states  and  offering  to  embody  it  by 
an  amendment  to  the  constitution  itself. 

Mr.  Winthrop  was  constantly  reelected  from 
Boston  for  ten  years,  and  in  1850  was  appointed 
United  States  Senator  to  fill  the  position  vacated 
by  Daniel  Webster,  who  went  into  President 
Fillmore's  Cabinet.  These  were  ten  years  of 
active  service.  His  youth  and  energy,  his  happy 
command  of  illustration,  both  from  books  and 
life,  his  genial  and  persuasive  address,  his  splendid 
social  position,  and  his  intimate  acquaintance  with 
the  leading  scholars  and  statesmen  of  Great 
Britain  and  France  made  him  the  favorite  leader 
of  the  House  under  Henry  Clay  and  Daniel 
Webster,  and  lifted  him  in  1847,  when  only 
thirty-eight  years  old,  to  the  Speakership  of  the 
House,  a  position  regarded  by  many  as  the  most 
honorable,  as  well  as  one  of  the  most  influential, 
under  our  Government.  It  is  possible  for  an 
inferior  man  to  be  elected  President  or  Vice-Presi- 
dent, but  not  as  Speaker  of  the  House,  which 
chooses  its  own  presiding  officer. 

Mr.  Winthrop's  career  as  Speaker  was 
eminently  successful.  The  late  Mr.  Charles  E. 
Hazewell  said, "  It  was  a  common  remark,  and  no 


ROBERT   C.  WINTHROP.  25 

one  heard  it  without  assenting  to  the  truth  of  the 
words  expressed,  '  Mr.  Winthrop  was  born  for 
the  chair.'"  Mr.  James  G.  Blaine  says,  "The 
chief  reason  for  liis  selection  as  Speaker  was  his 
preeminent  fitness  for  the  important  post.  He 
was  but  thirty-eight  years  of  age,  but  he  earned 
so  valuable  a  reputation  as  a  presiding  ofiicer  that 
some  of  his  decisions  have  been  quoted  as  pre- 
cedents in  the  National  House  and  have  been 
incorporated  in  permanent  works  on  '  Parliamen- 
tary Law.' " 

In  1 84 1  he  made  an  elaborate  speech  on  the 
tariff,  in  favor  of  protection  to  American  labor 
and  manufactures  (Vol.  2,  p.  306.)  In  1843  he 
submitted,  in  behalf  of  the  Committee  on  Com- 
merce, strong  resolutions  against  the  imprison- 
ment of  free  colored  seamen  from  vessels  touch- 
ing at  ports  in  the  Southern  States. 

In  1844,  when  the  great  question  as  to  the  right 
of  petition  came  before  the  House,  and  whether  the 
anti-slavery  petitions  from  Massachusetts  pre- 
sented by  John  Q.  Adams  should  be  received, 
Mr.  Winthrop  made  a  powerful  speech  in  their 
support,  breathing  the  liberty-laden  air  of 
Faneuil  Hall  and  the  Old  South  Church.  He 
argued  for  "  the  inherent  and  inextinguishable 
elasticity  of  opinion,  of  conscience,  of  inquiry, 
which,  like  the  great  agent  of  modern  art,  gains 
only  new  force,  fresh  vigor,  redoubled  powers  of 
progress  and  propulsion  by  every  degree  of  com- 
pression and  restraint;  it  is  this  to  which  the 
world  owes  all  the  liberty  it  has  yet  acquired,  and 
to  which  it  will  owe  all  that  is  yet  in  store  for  it. 


26  ROBERT   C.  WINTHROP. 

Well  did  John  Milton  exclaim  in  his  noble 
defense  of  unlicensed  printing,  'Give  me  liberty 
to  know,  to  utter,  and  to  argue  freely  above  all 
liberties,'  for  in  securing  that  we  secure  the  all- 
sufficient  instrument  for  achieving  all  other 
liberties." 

In  January,  1845,  •^^*  Winthrop  made  a 
powerful  speech  against  the  annexation  of  Texas 
upon  the  ground  that  it  involved  an  extension  of 
domestic  slavery,  and  he  made  several  speeches 
against  the  war  with  Mexico  as  an  unjust  contest 
for  the  acquisition  of  territory. 

While  recognizing  the  constitutional  rights  of 
the  South  to  some  provision  for  the  return  of 
fugitives,  he  refused  to  consent  to  any  law  which 
did  not  provide  for  a  fair  trial  by  jury  and  the 
writ  of  habeas  corpus. 

He  said,  "  I  hold  it  to  be  a  just  and  reasonable 
provision,  and  one  which  ought  to  form  a  part  of 
any  bill  which  shall  be  passed  for  this  purpose. 
There  is  a  preliminary  question,  and  that  is 
whether  he  is  a  fugitive  at  all,  whether  he 
belongs  or  owes  service  to  anybody.  It  must 
always  be  a  question  whether  such  a  person  be 
your  slave  or  whether  he  be  our  freeman  —  a 
question  which  should  be  tried  where  he  is  seized 
and  when  the  immediate  liberty  which  he  enjoys  is 
about  to  be  taken  away  from  him.  I  am  in  favor 
of  recognizing  the  right  of  trial  by  jury  in  all 
cases  where  a  question  of  personal  liberty  is  con- 
cerned." 

It  was  while  Mr.  Winthrop  was  Speaker  of 
the   House,  in  1848,  that  the  great  opportunity  of 


ROBERT   C.  WINTHROP.  27 

his  lifetime  occurred  in  being  selected  to  pro- 
nounce the  oration  when  the  corner-stone  of  the 
Washington  monument  was  laid. 

When  the  corner-stone  of  Bunker  Hill  monu- 
ment was  laid,  in  1825,  there  was  anxious  and 
careful  consultation  as  to  who  should  pronounce 
the  oi'ation.  The  choice  fortunately  fell  upon 
Daniel  Webster,  whose  oration,  as  Mr.  Winthrop 
said,  "shook  the  school-benches  of  New  Eng- 
land," and  passed  into  the  classics  of  a  language 
which  the  genius  of  Webster  has  shown  to  be  the 
strongest,  the  subtlest,  the  smoothest,  the  best  of 
modern  times.  When  that  magnificent  monu- 
ment was  completed,  in  1843,  there  was  no 
anxiety,  no  discussion,  no  doubt  as  to  what  orator 
should  stand  beside  it,  for  all  the  world  felt  that 
no  voice  but  Webster's  should  announce  the 
words  "  It  is  finished."  And  so  it  was  with  the 
still  grander  monument  to  Washington  in  our 
national  capital.  When  its  corner-stone  was  laid, 
in  1848,  it  was  a  matter  of  thought,  discussion  and 
anxiety  as  to  who  should  give  expression  to  a 
nation's  reverence  for  its  greatest  and  most  rep- 
resentative character  and  hero.  The  choice  fell 
almost  by  accident  upon  a  young  man  less  than 
forty  years  of  age.  Most  eloquently  did  the 
young  orator  perform  his  difiicult  task,  and  when 
after  thirty-seven  years  of  labor  and  trial  these 
United  States  had  through  the  convulsions  of 
civil  war  become  fused  into  a  compact  and  solidi- 
fied Nation,  and  finished  the  grandest  monument 
ever  erected  by  a  Nation  to  the  honor  of  a  single 
man,  there  was  among   our  fifty  millions  of  peo- 


28  ROBERT   C.  WINTHROP. 

pie  no  doubt  or  discussion  as  to  who  should  pro- 
nounce the  words  "  It  is  finished."  Without 
distinction  of  party  or  locality,  of  creed  or  color, 
both  North  and  South,  East  and  West,  moved  by 
a  common  impulse  pronounced  the  name  of  Rob- 
ert C.  Winthrop,  of  Massachusetts. 

Mr.  Winthrop's  seventeen  years  of  political 
service  came  to  an  end  in  1851.  A  coalition 
between  the  most  radical  wing  of  Free-soilers  and 
the  pro-slavery  Democracy  divided  the  offices  and 
defeated  the  conservative,  anti-slavery  Whig  party. 
After  a  hard  fought  battle  the  coalitionists 
triumphed  carrying  both  branches  of  the  Legisla- 
ture, but  the  conflict  for  Senator  went  on  for 
months,  and  Charles  Sumner  was  at  last  chosen 
by  a  bare  majority.  On  the  26th  ballot  April  24, 
1 85 1,  384  votes  were  cast,  193  being  necessary  to 
a  choice.  Mr.  Winthrop  received  the  full  Whig 
vote  166,  Mr.  Henry  W.  Bishop,  (the  father  of 
our  brother  member)  received  11,  and  Mr.  Sum- 
ner 193  votes,  mostly  Democrats  and  a  few  Free- 
soilers.  At  the  next  State  Election  the  Whigs 
insisted  on  running  Mr.  Winthrop  for  Governor. 
He  received  60,000  votes,  the  Democrats  cast  40,000 
for  George  S.  Boutwell,  and  the  Free-soilers 
30,000  for  the  eminent  historian  John  G.  Palfrey. 
The  constitution  at  that  time  required  a  majority 
of  all  votes  and  so  the  election  was  thrown  into 
the  House,  and  the  coalition  elected  Governor 
Boutwell. 

Since  1852  Mr.  Winthrop  refused  all  political 
candidacies  and  appointments,  and  has  devoted 
himself  to  literature,  to  history,  to  philanthropy. 


ROBERT   C.  WINTHROP.  29 

IV. 

PRESIDENT   OF    THE    MASSACHUSETTS    HIS- 
TORICAL  SOCIETY. 

Mr.  Winthrop  was  a  member  of  the  Massa- 
chusetts Historical  Society  for  nearly  sixty  years, 
and  was  its  president  for  thirty  years,  from  1855 
to  1885.  It  is  the  oldest  and  leading  society  of  its 
kind  in  America,  and  composed  of  such  men  as 
the  Adamses,  Quincys,  Everetts,  Motley,  Pres- 
cott,  Saltonstall,  Samuel  Hoar  and  his  sons,  the 
Judge  and  Senator;  Palfrey,  Bancroft,  Ellis, 
Parkman,  and  Winsor. 


ARTS  AND  SCIENCES. 

He  was  also  for  forty  years  an  active  member 
of  the  American  Academy  of  Arts  and  Sciences; 
established  in  1780,  in  the  midst  of  our  Revolu- 
tionary War,  by  his  great  grandfather.  Governor 
Bowdoin,  who  was  its  first  president.  Among 
its  other  presidents  were  the  three  illustrious 
Adamses — John  Adams,  John  Quincy  Adams 
and  Charles  Francis  Adams.  Among  its  members 
were  Franklin,  Faraday,  Rumford,  Agassiz, 
Audubon,  Arago,  Bache,  Su-  David  Brewster, 
Darwin,  Humboldt,   Lafayette  and  the   Lowells. 

It  is  difficult  to  overestimate  the  past  and  pos- 
sible future  benefit  of  this  society  to  the  world. 
At  its  centennial,  in  1880,  Mr.  Winthrop  re- 
marked ; 


30  ROBERT   C.  WINTHROP. 

"Could  the  founders  of  this  academy  even 
now  look  down  from  the  skies  upon  our  own 
little  State  of  Massachusetts,  with  what  rapture 
would  they  behold  encircling  this  academy  as 
their  original  nucleus  a  natural  history  society, 
with  its  manifold  and  growing  collections  and 
cabinets;  a  technological  institute,  with  its  admira- 
ble curriculum  of  scientific  education;  a  splendid 
museum  of  the  fine  arts ;  an  observatory,  with  its 
comet-seekers  and  transit  instruments,  and  with 
its  noble  refractor;  the  Lawrence  Scientific 
School;  the  chemical  laboratory  of  Prof.  Cooke; 
the  garden  and  herbarium  of  our  great  botanist. 
Dr.  Gray;  the  magnificent  Agassiz  Museum  of 
Comparative  Zoology,  and  close  at  its  side  the 
Peabody  Museum  of  Archaeology  and  Ethnol- 
ogy; and  all  our  thriving  associations  of  history 
and  literature  and  music,  of  horticulture  and  agri- 
culture; and,  better  than  all,  the  hosts  of  busy 
and  devoted  students  in  these  and  other  institu- 
tions, who  are  engaged  day  by  day  and  night  by 
night  in  searching  out  the  mysteries  of  nature, 
and  extorting  from  her  so  many  of  the  secrets 
which  have  been  hid  from  all  human  eyes  and  all 
human  conceptions  from  the  foundations  of  the 
world! 

"They  would  bje  heard  exclaiming  with  one 
accord,  in  the  sublime  words  with  which  our  first 
president  concluded  his  inaugural  discourse  a 
hundred  years  ago,  '  Great  and  marvelous  are 
Thy  works.  Lord  God  Almighty ;  in  wisdom  hast 
Thou  made  them  all !  '  " 


ROBERT   C.  WINTHROP.  31 

VI. 

Mr.  Winthrop  was  president  of  the  Boston 
Provident  Association  for  twenty-live  years, work- 
ing with  such  men  as  Dr.  Peabody,  Dr.  Lothrop, 
Bishop  Huntington  and  others.  When  he  re- 
tired, in  1879,  the  Executive  Committee  said  of 
him,  "  He  brought  to  us  not  only  the  respect  due  to 
eminent  national  services  and  an  honored  name, 
but  the  power  of  organization  and  skill  in  admin- 
istration which  were  natural  to  his  character  and 
had  been  matured  by  experience  of  weighty  and 
conspicuous  public  affairs.  His  constant  and 
punctual  presence  at  our  meetings  has  added  both 
dispatch  and  dignity  to  the  transaction  of  our  busi- 
ness. His  name  has  brought  to  us  the  most  im- 
portant of  the  legacies  which  we  have  received, 
and  it  is  within  bounds  to  say  that  for  the  gener- 
ous endowment  of  our  association  we  are  as  much 
indebted  to  him  as  if  it  had  been  his  direct  gift. 
The  future  historian  of  Boston  can  never  pass  by 
the  important  services  which  Mr.  Winthrop  has 
rendered  to  its  charities." 

Mr.  Winthrop  was  a  member  of  the  vestry  of 
Trinity  Church,  Boston,  for  nearly  sixty  consecu- 
tive years,  and  a  delegate  to  the  General  Conven- 
tion of  the  Protestant  Episcopal  church  in  Ameri- 
ca for  more  than  a  quarter  of  a  century.  His 
record,  however,  as  a  Christian  was  too  broad  to 
be  hemmed  in  even  by  that  most  beautiful  of  all 
the  parish  churches  in  Christendom.  He  had  the 
good  fortune  to  worship  for  nearly  thirty  years 
with  his  grand  Christian  rector,  Phillips   Brooks, 


32  ROBERT   C.  WINTHROP. 

who  was  born  in  Boston  at  about  the  period  when 
Mr.  Winthrop  was  first  elected  a  vestryman  of 
old  Trinity.  Mr.  Winthrop  was  president  of  the 
Massachusetts  Bible  Society  and  connected  with 
many  other  religious  societies.  Not  the  least  in- 
teresting of  his  addresses  are  those  to  the  Bible 
societies  and  Young  Men's  Christian  Associations. 
I  would  call  attention  especially  to  that  one  deliv- 
ered April  9,  1859,  at  Boston,  and  repeated  on 
May  5,  1859,  ^^  Richmond,  Va.,  on  "  Christianity, 
neither  Sectarian  nor  Sectional,  the  Great  Remedy 
for  Social  and  Political  Evils,"  from  which  we 
take  the  following  extracts  (Vol.  II,  pp.  418  et 
seq.) 

"  Few  persons  can  contemplate  the  present  im- 
proved condition  of  the  Christian  world  without 
lamenting  that  the  best  energies  of  Christian 
sects  are  still  so  often  employed  in  criticising,  cen- 
suring and  condemning  each  other.  I  pray 
heaven  that  no  accident  and  still  more  that  no  de- 
sign may  revive  the  slumbering  embers  of  relig- 
ious strife.  Rarely  does  the  strongest  side  prevail 
or  even  come  off  best  from  such  encounters.  Not 
often  does  even  the  right  sidie,  whether  it  be 
strongest  or  weakest,  escape  from  them  without 
damage  or  detriment.  Principles  indeed  can 
never  be  conceded  nor  compromised.  We  can 
never  abandon  the  Bible,  even  in  the  schools. 
We  can  never  compromise  the  Lord's  prayer  or 
the  ten  commandments.  We  cannot  spare  a  note 
or  a  chord  of  the  time-honored  and  glorious  har- 
monies of  Old  Hundred.  Yet  everything  except 
principles,   everything  that  is  merely  formal  and 


ROBERT   C.  WINTHROP.  33 

conventional,  may  well  be  the  subject  of  concilia- 
tory arrangement  under  proper  circumstances,  and 
at  the  proper  time  for  the  sake  of  Christian  peace. 
I  can  never  think  of  the  bitterness  and  rancor 
w^hich  is  so  often  allowed  to  enter  into  religious 
differences  and  controversies,  without  remember- 
ing how  much  our  religious  opinions,  our  religious 
creeds,  our  religious  connections  have  been  deter- 
mined— pre-determined,  providentially  determined 
— for  us  all  by  the  mere  influence  of  early  and 
seemingly  accidental  associations.  The  place  of 
our  birth,  the  circumstances  of  our  condition,  the 
surroundings  of  our  childhood,  the  fascination  of 
some  beloved  and  faithful  pastor  the  paternal  pre- 
cept and  example,  the  mother's  knee,  the  family 
pew  have  after  all  done  more  to  decide  for  each 
one  of  us  the  peculiarities  of  our  religious  faith 
and  of  our  religious  forms  than  all  the  catechisms 
of  assemblies,  the  decrees  of  councils  or  the  canons 
of  convocations.  We  delight  to  worship  God 
where  our  fathers  and  mothers  worshipped  him, 
to  kneel  at  the  same  altar  at  which  they  knelt,  to 
unite  in  the  same  prayers  or  it  may  be  to  utter  the 
same  responses,  in  which  their  voices  were  once 
heard  and  which  they  first  taught  us  to  lisp  or  to 
listen  too  as  children.  The  memories  of  fathers 
and  mothers  and  brothers  and  sisters  with  whom 
we  have  "  taken  sweet  counsel  together  and 
walked  to  the  house  of  God  in  company"  cluster 
sweetly  around  us  as  we  sit  in  the  old  seats  and 
sing  the  old  psalms  and  hymns.  We  almost 
shrink  from  trying  to  get  to  heaven  by  any  other 
road  than  that  which  they  traveled,  lest  we  should 
3 


34  ROBERT   C.  WINTHROP. 

miss  them  at  our  journey's  end.  Every  man 
who  has  opportunity  and  education  should  read 
the  gospel  of  Christ  for  himself  and  bring  the 
best  lights  within  his  reach  to  aid  him  in  its  inter- 
pretation. But  mysteries  there  are  in  that  gospel 
which  constrained  even  the  great  apostle  to  say, 
"Here  we  see  through  a  glass,  darkly."  Mys- 
teries there  are  which  the  reason  of  the  natural 
man  was  never  made  or  intended  to  penetrate, 
which  it  may  be  were  expressly  designed  to 
humble  the  presumption  and  confound  the  pride 
and  mortify  the  vanity  of  mere  human  wisdom, 
and  to  leave  larger  room  for  the  childlike  graces 
of  humility  and  faith,  and  the  speculative  differ- 
ences which  such  mysteries  must  ever  and  inevita- 
bly engender  should  be  regarded  with  mutual 
deference  and  charity — never  forgetting  that  it 
were  an  impeachment  of  the  love  of  God  and  an 
imputation  upon  the  mercy  of  Christ,  to  imagine 
that  the  essential  elements  of  a  true  Christian  faith 
have  been  placed  beyond  the  easy  reach  and  ready 
acceptance  even  of  the  humblest  and  simplest  un- 
derstanding."    II.  423. 

"  I  hail  this  union  of  young  men  of  so  many  dif- 
ferent Christian  sects  in  a  single  association  for 
Christian  ends  and  objects,  as  a  pledge  that  the 
jealousies  and  rivalries  which  have  so  long  divided 
the  church  of  Christ  on  earth,  will  be  more  as- 
suaged and  extinguished,  that  religious  men  of  all 
denominations  will  more  and  more  bear  in  mind 
the  great  and  glorious  things  in  which  they  all 
agree,  and  will  strive  to  narrow  instead  of  wid- 
ening their  causes  of  alienation  and  estrangement. 


ROBERT   C.  WINTHROP.  35 

The  day  may  come  when  the  cause  of  Chris- 
tianity may  require  the  cordial  and  vigorous  un- 
ion of  all  who  acknowledge  God  as  their  Father 
and  Christ  as  their  Redeemer  and  Saviour,  and  the 
Bible  as  the  word  of  God  and  the  only  text-book 
of  eternal  truth,  in  order  to  withstand  and  resist  the 
progress  of  a  downright  infidelity — cloaking  itself 
,ainder  a  thousand  specious  forms  of  positive  and 
speculative  philosophy,  of  materialism,  spiritual- 
ism and  pantheism.  Let  us  prepare  seasonably 
for  such  a  day,  and  for  the  conflicts  it  will  involve 
by  uniting  together  in  a  league  of  Christian  char- 
ity— holding  our  faith  in  the  unity  of  the  Spirit 
and  in  the  bond  of  peace.  Let  us  pursue  our 
Christian  work  in  the  true  spirit  of  Christianity 
— a  spirit  of  love  to  God  and  of  love  to  man — 
maintaining  our  peculiar  and  distinctive  tenets 
firml}'  but  never  arrogantly,  boldly  but  never  of- 
fensively, uncompromisingly  but  never  aggres- 
sively ;  ever  respecting  our  neighbor's  conscience 
as  we  claim  our  neighbor's  respect  for  our  own 
conscience,  and  not  forgetting  that  our  final  respon- 
sibilities are  not  to  each  other  but  to  that  common 
Master  before  whom  we  must  stand  or  fall.  Who 
does  not  rejoice,  as  Sunday  after  Sunday  comes 
round,  to  see  the  multitudes  that  keep  holy  day, 
thronging  our  streets  and  sidewalks  and  ex- 
changing the  smiles  of  recognition  or  the  greetings 
of  friendship  or  the  formalities  of  ceremony  as  they 
make  way  for  each  other  in  passing  along  to  their 
various  places  of  religious  worship.  To  human 
eyes  indeed  thiey  seem  to  be  moving  in  widely 
different  directions,  and  so  it  may  prove   to   have 


36  ROBERT   C.  WINTHROP. 

been  with  some  of  them ;  but  so  have  I  seen  on  a 
summer  sea,  in  yonder  bay,  alike  in  calm  and  in 
storm,  vessels  of  every  sort  and  beneath  every 
sign,  sailing  in  widely  different  and  diverging 
courses,  crossing  and  recrossing  each  other's  tracks 
and  seemingly  propelled  by  the  most  opposite  and 
contrarious  forces.  Yet  the  same  wind  of  heaven, 
blowing  where  it  listeth,  was  the  common  source 
of  their  motive  power,  giving  impulse  and  direc- 
tion to  the  progress  of  them  all  alike,  and  bring- 
ing them  all  to  be  moored  at  last  in  one  common 
haven  of  rest." 

The  broad-minded,  beautiful  tolerance  of  Mr. 
Winthrop  is  admirably  illustrated  by  the  following 
quotation  from  his  oration  on  the  250th  anniver- 
sary of  the  Landing  of  the  Pilgrims  :  (Vol.  Ill, 
p.  105.) 

"  Let  those  who  will,  indulge  in  the  dream,  or 
cherish  the  waking  vision  of  a  single  universal 
church  on  earth,  recognized  and  accepted  of  men, 
whose  authority  is  binding  on  every  conscience 
and  decisive  of  every  point  of  faith  or  form.  To 
the  eye  of  God,  indeed,  such  a  church  may  be  visi- 
ble even  now  in  '  the  blessed  company  of  all  faith- 
ful people,'  in  whatever  region  they  may  dwell, 
with  whatever  organization  they  may  be  connect- 
ed, with  Him  as  their  head  'of  whom  the  whole 
family  in  earth  and  heaven  is  named.'  And  as  in 
some  grand  orchestra,  hundreds  of  performers, 
each  with  his  own  instrument  and  his  own  sepa- 
rate score,  strike  widely  variant  notes,  and  pro- 
duce sounds,  sometimes  in  close  succession  and 
sometimes  at    lengthened  intervals,  which    heard 


ROBERT   C.  WINTHROP.  37 

alone  would  seem  to  be  wanting  in  everything 
like  method  or  melody,  but  which  heard  together 
are  found  delighting  the  ear  and  ravishing  the 
soul  with  a  flood  of  magnificent  harmony,  as  they 
give  concerted  expression  to  the  glowing  concep- 
tions of  some  mighty  master,  even  so — even  so, 
it  may  be, — from  the  differing,  broken,  and  often 
seemingly  discordant  strains  of  sincere  seekers 
after  God,  the  divine  ear,  upon  which  no  lisp  of 
the  voice  or  breathing  of  the  heart  is  ever  lost, 
catches  only  a  combmed  and  glorious  anthem  of 
prayer  and  praise.  But  to  human  ears  such  har- 
monies are  not  vouchsafed.  The  Church  in  all  its 
majestic  unity  shall  be  revealed  hereafter.  The 
'Jerusalem  which  is  the  mother  of  us  all,  is  above,' 
and  we  can  only  humbly  hope  that  in  the  provi- 
dence of  God,  its  gates  shall  be  wider,  and  its 
courts  fuller,  and  its  members  quickened  and  mul- 
tiplied by  the  very  differences  of  form  and  of  doc- 
trine which  have  divided  Christians  from  each 
other  on  earth,  and  which  have  created  something 
of  competition  and  rivalry,  and  even  of  conten- 
tion, in  their  efforts  to  advance  the  ends  of  their 
respective  denominations." 


VII. 

THE    PEABODY   TRUST. 

Great  and  striking  as  have  been  Mr.  Win- 
throp's  contributions  to  politics,  to  Harvard  Uni- 
versity, to  the  charities  of  his  vicinage,  to  histor- 
ical and  literary  work,  to  the  arts  and  sciences,  and 


38  ROBERT   C.  WINTHROP. 

to  his  beloved  church,  it  seems  to  me  his  last  work 
in  life,  begun  at  an  age  when  most  of  us  are  will- 
ing to  rest  upon  our  oars  and  float  upon  the 
stream,  especially  if  the  current  of  our  lives  runs 
through  peaceful  and  beautiful  shores,  is  the  most 
touching  and  affecting  of  all  his  work. 

On  the  7th  of  February,  1867,  his  friend 
George  Peabody,  a  philanthropist  without  prece- 
dent or  parallel,  preeminent  among  the  benefac- 
tors of  his  age  and  race,  like  Washington  among 
patriots  and  Shakespeare  among  poets,  committed 
to  Mr.  Winthrop  in  sacred  trust  millions  of  dollars 
for  the  intellectual,  moral  or  industrial  education 
of  the  young  of  the  South,  "  without  other  distinc- 
tion than  their  needs  and  the  opportunities  of  use- 
fulness to  them."  In  the  first  paragraph  of  Mr. 
Peabody's  letter  he  alludes  to  Mr.  Winthrop  as 
"the  distinguished  and  valued  friend  to  whom  I 
am  so  much  indebted  for  cordial  sympathy,  care- 
ful consideration  and  wise  counsel ;  and  the  details 
and  organization  of  the  trust  I  leave  with  you, 
only  requesting  that  Mr.  Winthrop  may  be  chair- 
man and  Governor  Fish  and  Bishop  Mcllvaine 
vice-chairmen  of  your  body." 

How  singular  and  grand  it  was  that  this  great- 
est benefaction  of  modern  times  should  come  from 
a  son  of  Massachusetts  to  the  poor  children  of 
many  who  had  slain  thousands  of  her  loveliest 
sons  in  battle,  and  that  the  descendant  of  John 
Winthrop  the  Puritan  should  be  the  chief  execu- 
tor and  trustee  to  those  desolate  children  of  the 
South. 

From  February,   1867,  to  the  present  time  the 


ROBERT   C.  WINTHROP.  39 

choicest  labor  of  Mr.  Winthrop  has  been  in  the 
execution  of  this  noble  trust,  and  in  its  execution 
he  has  had  the  hearty  cooperation  of  such  men  as 
Bishops  Mcllvaine  and  Whipple,  Chief  Justices 
Waite  and  Fuller,  Hamilton  Fish,  General  Grant, 
President  Hayes,  William  M.  Evarts,  and  others 
of  similar  eminence. 

I  will  not  enter  into  any  detail  of  the  immense 
amount  of  work  accomplished  by  this  board,  but 
those  of  you  who  are  teachers  can  imagine  the 
study  and  travel  and  anxiety  and  responsibility  in- 
volved when  I  state  that  the  board  has  already 
distributed  nearly  three  millions  of  money  from 
the  income  of  their  fund.  They  have  given  to 
Alabama  $89,800;  to  Arkansas  $97,050;  to 
Florida  $61,375;  to  Georgia  $102,552;  to  Louisi- 
ana $95,600;  to  Mississippi  $71,378;  to  North 
Carolina  $131,365;  to  South  Carolina  $74,425; 
to  Tennessee  $202,700;  to  Texas  $99,850;  to 
Virginia  $259,550;  to  West  Virginia  $139,000 
and  to  the  Normal  College  at  Nashville 
$303,000. 

It  is  pleasant  to  be  able  to  state  in  this  connec- 
tion that  the  generosity  of  Mr.  Peabody  and  his 
Trustees  has  drawn  with  its  magnet  of  sympathy 
other  helps  in  the  shape  of  a  donation  of  100,000 
books  from  D.  Appleton  &  Co.,  and  about  100,000 
more  from  A.  S.  Barnes  &  Co. 

No  wonder  that  the  name  of  Winthrop  is  hon- 
ored and  reverenced  all  over  the  lately  desolated 
South,  next  to  that  of  Washington  and  Peabody ; 
that  States  and  cities  and  individuals  should  have 
covered  his  name  with  blessings.  In  South  Carolina 


40  ROBERT   C.  WINTHROP. 

the  General  Assembly  incorporated  its  training 
school  for  teachers  by  the  name  of  "  The  Win- 
throp  Training  School,"  and  its  board  "  Re- 
solved that  the  12th  day  of  May,  the  birthday 
of  the  Hon.  Robert  C.  Winthrop,  be  set  apart  as 
an  annual  memorial  day,  in  commemoration  of  the 
beneficence  by  which  the  school  was  founded." 

In  this  epitome  of  the  records,  which  could  well 
be  amplified  into  volumes,  I  have  merely  sought 
to  explain  why  it  was  that  Robert  C.  Winthrop 
has  been  so  situated,  so  connected  and  so  gifted  as 
to  make  him  our  ''''supreme  Eulogist.^''  I  know 
no  other  man  who  has  had  such  opportunities,  and 
who  has  so  perfectly  realized  the  hopes  and  re- 
lieved the  anxieties  of  relatives  and  friends  by 
pronouncing  fitting  eulogies  upon  the  great  dead 
of  his  century. 

He  has  survived  almost  every  one  of  the  toilers 
who  kept  step  with  his  early  years.  My  hour 
would  not  permit  me  to  enumerate  even  the  sub- 
jects of  his  formal  eulogies. 

Had  I  a  magician's  wand  which  could  sum- 
mon from  their  homes  the  spirits  of  those  whose 
memories  have  been  commemorated  by  the 
tongue  of  Mr.  Winthrop,  I  should  draw  around 
us  to-night  such  a  company  as  the  world  could 
hardly  have  duplicated.  He  has  delivered  more 
than  one  hundred  and  forty  public  eulogies,  of 
greater  or  less  length  and  fullness.  Leaving  out 
his  peerless  Washington  the  majestic  father  of 
his  country,  and  Franklin  the  great  Bostonian, 
and  Governor  Bowdoin,  and  Governor  Winthrop, 


ROBERT   C.  WINTHROP.  4^ 

and  Luther  and  Dante,  and  a  few  others  whom 
he  knew  only  in  the  spirit  and  by  their  words  and 
works,  and  confining  ourselves  only  to  those 
whose  hearts  were  clasped  with  hooks  of  living 
steel  to  his  own,  what  a  company  should  we  see! 

At  the  head  of  the  column  come  their  coun- 
try's defenders,  those  who  bared  their  breasts  to 
the  shot  and  shell  of  foreign  or  domestic  enemies 
that  America,  the  hope  of  the  world,  might  be 
preserved.  Prescott,  Knox,  Lafayette,  Rocham- 
beau,  Steuben,  Dearborn,  Preble,  Sullivan, 
Decatur,  Scott,  Harrison,  Taylor  and  Grant  are 
all  in  line  acknowledging  in  patriotic  salute  the 
eloquent  words  with  which  he  has  pictured  them 
on  the  records  of  our  history. 

Following  them  comes  that  great  company  of 
statesmen  whose  voices  were  heard  with  his  own 
in  the  State  House  and  Faneuil  Hall  at  Boston, 
or  in  the  House  or  Senate  Chamber  at  Washing- 
ton :  Webster,  Calhoun  and  Clay,  Adams  and 
Everett,  John  Bell,  John  P.  Kennedy,  Nathan 
Appleton  and  William  C.  Rives,  Thomas  Benton 
and  Lewis  Cass,  Josiah  Quincy  and  John  H.  Clif- 
ford, Robert  J.  Breckenridge  and  John  J.  Critten- 
den ;  and  among  all  those  voices,  now  stilled 
forever,  where  was  one  which  spoke  more  often, 
more  feelingly  for  our  Union  and  our  Constitution 
than  Robert  C.  Winthrop? 

The  somewhat  saddened  procession  of  patriots, 
remembered  as  more  or  less  connected  with  our 
country's  storms  and  tempests,  gives  way  to 
another    filled    with    the    perpetual    sunshine    of 


42  ROBERT   C.  WINTHROP. 

letters  and  the  arts.  The  great  singers  go 
marching  by,  headed  by  Dana,  Halleck,  Long- 
fellow and  Bryant. 

In  the  broader  field  of  literature  the  double 
column  widens  into  a  battalion  and  brings  us 
numbers  from  beyond  the  seas,  headed  by  Irving, 
Motley,  Prescott,  Palfrey,  Savage,  Sparks  and 
Channing. 

The  true  and  only  way  to  understand  and 
appreciate  Mr.  Winthrop's  work  is  to  read  his 
published  addresses.  They  are  an  autobiography 
of  his  own  life  and  mind  and  a  history  of  his 
country  and  times,  as  well  as  a  tribute  to  the 
hundreds  of  great  men  with  whom,  he  has  lived 
and  labored.  His  style  is  so  simple  and  pure  and 
runs  so  smoothly  that  one  can  read  his  speeches 
through  consecutively  without  weariness.  When 
readiag  the  orations  of  his  great  predecessor, 
Webster,  you  feel  as  if  you  were  always  on 
mountain  tops,  but  reading  Mr.  Winthrop  is  like 
a  journey  through  his  own  beautiful  New  Eng- 
land, mounting  at  times  to  the  highest  altitudes 
of  thought  and  expression,  but  constantly  dipping 
into  different  grades — enjoying  sometimes  the 
running  stream,  the  babbling  brook,  the  hum  of 
neighboring  industry  and  the  perfume  of  rural 
flowers. 

His  eulogies  of  individuals  have  been  truly 
historical,  and  the  salient  points  of  their  lives 
have  been  skillfully  formulated  and  presented. 
Among  his  contemporaries  might  especially  be 
mentioned  his  eulogies  upon  Nathan  Appleton, 
Thomas   Aspinwall,  William  H.  Prescott,  Josiah 


ROBERT   C.  WINTHROP.  43 

Quincy,  Edward  Everett,  John  H.  Clifford  and 
George  Peabody. 

The  various  powers  of  the  orator  are  admir- 
ably displayed  by  his  beautiful  treatment  of  those 
most  capable  men,  all  so  great  in  character  and 
works,  yet  so  different  and  distinct  in  individual 
peculiarities. 

But  of  all  others  his  tributes  to  Washington, 
to  Franklin,  to  Henry  Clay,  and  Daniel  Webster 
are  preeminent.  Did  time  permit  I  would  select 
from  his  countless  treasures  a  few  jewels  from 
each,  and  weave  a  chain  of  gems  that  you  could 
carry  away  with  you  instead  of  any  thoughts  or 
words  of  my  own,  but  time  compels  me  to  limit 
myself  to  a  few  specimens  of  his  tributes  to  one 
subject  only  for  illustration  of  his  style  and 
manner : 

As  long  ago  as  1837,  while  Mr.  Webster  was  still 
alive,  Mr.  Winthrop  said  (Vol.  I  p.  216): — "The  career  of 
Mr.  Webster  is  before  the  country.  Let  him  retire 
when  he  will — he  needs  no  defense,  he  requires  no 
eulogy,  he  fears  no  investigation.  Retire  when  he  will, 
he  will  leave  light,  imperishable,  unfading  light  behind 
him,  and  that  not  only  gilding  his  own  memory  and 
casting  glory  upon  our  common  wealth,  but  cheering 
and  guiding  and  illuminating  the  path  of  constitutional 
patriotism  throughout  all  generations.  Other  stars 
may  have  reached  a  higher  ascension,  may  have 
sparkled  with  a  more  dazzling  luster,  may  have  shot 
with  a  wilder  fire.  Meteors  too  may  have  flashed 
and  flamed  and  glared  and  cast  a  moment's  wonder 
or  a  moment's  fear  and  passed  away.  But  as  long  as  our 
glorious  Constitution  shall  be  borne  up  upon  the  waves 
of  trial,  and  its  banner  of  union  and  liberty  be  seen 
streaming  to  the  winds,  in  every  moment  of  doubt  and 
danger  the   passengers    and    the    pilot   will    be    found 


44  ROBERT   C.  WINTHROP. 

turning  alike  for   their  direction  to    our   own  Northern 
Star, 

"  Of  whose  true  fixed  and   resting  quality 
There  is  no  fellow  in  the  firmament." 

In  1876  at  the  unvailing  of  Webster's  statue  in 
Central  Park,  N.  Y.,  he  said  (Vol.  III.  p.  438):  "To 
have  seen  and  heard  him  on  one  of  his  field  days  was  a 
privilege,  which  no  one  will  undervalue  whoever  enjoyed 
it.  There  was  a  power,  a  breadth,  a  beauty,  a  perfection 
in  some  of  his  efforts  which  distanced  all  approach  and 
rendered  rivalry  ridiculous." 

<' Among  those  who  have  been  celebrated  as  orators 
or  public  sj>eakers,  in  our  own  days  or  in  other  days, 
there  have  been  many  divei-sities  of  gifts  and  many 
diversities  of  operations.  There  have  been  those  who 
were  listened  to  wholly  for  their  intellectual  qualities, 
for  the  wit  or  the  wisdom,  the  learning  or  the  philosophy, 
which  characterized  their  efforts.  There  have  been 
those  whose  main  attraction  was  a  curious  felicity  and 
facility  of  illustration  and  description,  adorned  by  the 
richest  gems  which  could  be  gathered  by  historical  re- 
search or  classical  study.  There  have  been  those  to 
whom  the  charms  of  manner  and  the  graces  of  elocution 
and  the  melody  of  voice  were  the  all-sufficient  recom- 
mendations to  attention  and  applause.  And  there  have 
been  those  who  owed  their  success  more  to  opportunity 
and  occasion,  to  some  stirring  theme  or  some  exciting 
emergency,  than  to  any  peculiar  attributes  of  their  own. 
But  Webster  combined  everything.  No  thoughts  more 
profound  and  weighty.  No  style  more  terse  and  telling' 
No  illustrations  more  vivid  and  clear-cut.  No  occasions 
more  august  and  momentous.  No  voice  more  deep  and 
thrilling.  No  manner  more  impressive  and  admirable. 
No  presence  so  grand  and  majestic,  as  his. 

That  great  brain  of  his,  as  I  have  seen  it  working, 
whether  in  public  debate  or  in  private  converse,  seemed 
to  me  often  like  some  mighty  machine, — always  ready 
for  action,  and  almost  always  in  action,  evolving 
much    material  from  its  own  resources  and  researches* 


ROBERT   C.  WINTHROP.  45 

and  eagerly  appropriating  and  assimilating  whatever 
was  brought  witin  its  reach,  producing  and  reproducing 
the  richest  fabrics  with  the  ease  and  certainty,  the  pre- 
cision and  the  condensing  energy,  of  a  perfect  Corliss 
engine. 

And  he  put  his  own  crown-stamp  on  almost  every 
thing  he  uttered.  There  was  no  mistaking  one  of  Web- 
ster's great  efforts.  There  is  no  mistaking  them  now. 
They  will  be  distinguished,  in  all  time  to  come,  like 
pieces  of  old  gold  or  silver  plate,  by  an  unmistakable 
mint-mark.  He  knew,  like  the  casters  or  forgers  of 
yonder  statue,  not  only  how  to  pour  forth  burning 
words  and  blazing  thoughts,  but  so  to  blend  and  fuse 
and  weld  together  his  facts  and  figures,  his  illustrations 
and  arguments,  his  metaphors  and  subject  matter,  as  to 
bring  them  all  out  at  last  into  one  massive  and  enduring 
image  of  his  own  great  mind!" 

When  the  Webster  Centennial  Banquet  was  held  at 
Boston,  January  i8,  1882,  it  was  thought  that  Mr.  Win- 
throp  would  not  be  able  to  speak,  or  would  feel  as  if  he 
had  already  said  all  he  could  say.  Our  associate  Mr. 
Dexter  told  me  at  the  time,  that  he  went  on  purpose  to 
hear  Mr.  Winthrop  and  that  it  was  one  of  the  greatest 
treats  of  his  life,  and  with  one  quotation  from  that  even- 
ing's speech  I  will  close: 

(Vol.  IV.,  p.  377.)  "Living  and  dead  he  has  been  the 
theme  of  the  most  eloquent  orators,  of  the  most  faithful 
and  loving  biographers  of  our  land  —  Everett,  and 
Choate,  and  Hillard,  President  Felton  of  Harvard,  Presi- 
dent Woods  of  Bowdoin,  and  Mr.  Wm.  M.  Evarts — to 
name  no  others — have  found  in  him  the  inspiration  of 
some  of  their  most  celebrated  efforts,  who  may  well  be 
content  to  live  on  the  applauses  and  praises  which  their 
efforts  have  called  forth  from  immediate  hearers  and 
admirers.  They  will  enjoy  at  least  a  reflected  and  tra- 
ditional fame.  But  Webster  will  always  stand  safest  and 
strongest  on  his  own  showing.  His  fame  will  be  inde- 
pendent of  praise  or  dispraise  from  other  men's  lips. 
He  can  be  measured  to  his  full  altitude,  as  a  thinker,  a 
writer,  a  speaker,  only  by  the  standard  of  his  own   im- 


46  ROBERT   C.  WINTHROP. 

mortal  productions.  That  masterly  style,  that  pure 
Saxon  English,  that  clear  and  cogent  statement,  that 
close  and  clinching  logic,  that  power  of  going  down  to 
the  depths  and  up  to  the  heights  of  any  great  argument, 
letting  the  immaterial  or  incidental  look  out  for  itself, 
those  vivid  descriptions,  those  magnificent  metaphors, 
those  thrilling  appeals, — not  introduced  as  mere  orna- 
ments wrought  out  in  advance  and  stored  up  for  an 
opportunity  of  display,  but  sparkling  and  blazing  out  in 
the  very  heat  of  an  effort,  like  gems  uncovering  them- 
selves in  the  working  of  a  mine, — these  are  some  of  the 
characteristics  which  will  secure  for  Webster  a  fame 
altogether  his  own,  and  will  make  his  works  a  model 
and  a  study  long  after  most  of  those  who  have  praised 
him,  or  who  have  censured  him,  shall  be  forgotten. 

What  if  those  six  noble  volumes  of  his  were  obliter- 
ated from  the  roll  of  American  literature  and  American 
eloquence!  What  if  those  consummate  defences  of  the 
Constitution  and  the  Union  had  never  been  uttered,  and 
their  instruction  and  inspiration  had  been  lost  to  us 
during  the  fearful  ordeal  to  which  that  Constitution  and 
that  Union  have  since  been  subjected!  Are  we  quite 
sure  that  we  should  have  had  the  Constitution,  as  it  was, 
and  the  Union  as  it  is,  to  be  fought  for,  if  the  birth  we 
are  commemorating  had  never  occurred, — if  that  bright 
Northern  Star  had  never  gleamed  above  the  hills  of 
New  Hemisphere?  Letit  be,  if  you  please,  that  its  light 
was  not  always  serene  and  steady.  Let  it  be  that  mist 
and  clouds  sometimes  gathered  over  its  disk,  and  hid  its 
guiding  rays  from  many  a  wistful  eye.  Say  even,  if 
you  will,  that  to  some  eyes  it  seemed  once  to  be  shoot- 
ing madly  from  its  sphere.  Make  every  deduction 
which  his  bitterest  enemies  have  ever  made  for  any 
alleged  deviation  from  the  course  which  had  been 
marked  out  for  it  by  others,  or  which  it  seemed  to  have 
marked  out  for  itself,  in  its  path  across  the  sky.  Still, 
still,  there  is  radiance  and  glory  enough  left,  as  we  con- 
template its  whole  golden  track,  to  make  us  feel  and 
acknowledge  that  it  had  no  fellow  in  our  firmament. 


ROBERT  C.  WINTHROP.  47 

It  may  be  truly  said  of  Mr.  Winthrop  as 
he  said  of  Mr.  Webster  at  the  Webster  centen- 
nial banquet  in  Boston  in  1883  : 

"After  all,  what  are  all  the  fine  things  which 
have  ever  been  said  of  him,  or  which  ever  can  be 
said  of  him,  to-night  or  a  hundred  years  hence, 
compared  with  the  splendid  record  which  he  has 
left  of  himself  as  a  debater  in  Congress  and  as  an 
orator  before  the  people?  We  do  not  search  out 
for  what  was  said  about  Pericles  or  Demosthenes 
or  Cicero  or  Burke.  It  is  enough  for  us  to  read 
their  orations." 

Mr.  Winthrop  will  be  remembered  by  differ- 
ent men  in  various  characters  as  an  historian,  a 
scholar,  a  statesman,  a  dispenser  of  hospitality  to 
distinguished  visitors  from  the  Old  World,  as  a 
Christian  or  a  philanthropist. 

But  where  and  how  will  he  be  remembered 
longest  and  best? 

When  the  young  men  of  future  generations 
pay  their  first  visit  to  Bunker  Hill,  and  behold 
the  speaking  statue  of  Colonel  Prescott,  they  will 
surely  be  told  to  read  of  its  graphic  story  from 
the  orator  who  unveiled  it  to  an  admiring  popu- 
lace. 

When  they  behold  the  lifelike  statue  of  the 
philosopher  and  patriot  Benjamin  Franklin,  in 
front  of  the  old  court  house  in  Boston,  so  near 
the  place  of  his  birth  and  the  grave  of  his 
parents,  they  will  be  told  by  whom  that  statue 
was  inaugurated  and  the  admirable  oration  pro- 
nounced upon  its  completion. 

When  they   visit   the   memorials  of   our  great 


48  ROBERT   C.  WINTHROP. 

men  in  New  York,  and  behold  the  colossal  statue 
of  that  colossal  genius  Daniel  Webster,  they  will 
be  directed  to  the  grand  oration  spoken  at  its  first 
exhibition  by  his  pupil  and  friend,  who  more  than 
any  other  orator  of  our  times  has  pictured  him  to 
us  in  w^ords  that  will  live.  When  they  visit  the 
sandy  plains  of  Yorktown,  one  of  their  chief 
delights  will  be  the  story  there  told  before  the 
representatives  of  three  nations  upon  the 
hundredth  anniversary  of  the  triumph  of  Ameri- 
can arms.  When  they  repair  to  the  capital  of 
our  country  and  stand  beside  the  monument  to 
Washington,  of  all  the  figures  which  will  come 
trooping  before  their  excited  imaginations  there 
will  be  few  indeed  which  will  stand  out  more 
vividly  than  that  of  the  tall,  slender,  courteous 
orator  who  was  part  of  its  corner  stone  and  its 
capstone;  and  in  fancy  they  will  still  hear  his 
ringing  tones  as  he  said :  "  Build  it  to  the  skies, 
you  cannot  outreach  the  loftiness  of  his  princi- 
ples !  Found  it  upon  the  massive  and  eternal 
rock,  you  cannot  make  it  more  enduring  than  his 
fame !  Construct  it  of  the  peerless  Parian 
marble,  you  cannot  make  it  purer  than  his  life ! 
Exhaust  upon  it  the  rules  and  principles  of 
ancient  and  of  modern  art,  you  cannot  make  it 
more  proportionate  than  his  character!" 


C: 


APPENDIX. 


RESOLUTIONS. 

At  the  regular  annual  meeting  of  the  Chicago 
Historical  Society,  on  the  20th  day  of  November, 
1894,  Mr.  Edward  G.  Mason,  President. 

Upon  motion  of  Mr.  Daniel  Goodwin, 
seconded  by  Mr.  Charles  MuUiken,  the  following 
memorial  tribute  was  unanimously  adopted. 

Whereas,  the  Chicago  Historical  Society  has 
learned  through  the  Public  Press  of  the  death  of  the 
Hon.  Robert  C.  Winthrop,  who  for  many  years  has 
been  one  of  our  honorary  members,  and  for  fifty-five 
years  was  a  distinguished  member  of  the  Massachusetts 
Historical  Society,  we  desire  to  put  upon  our  records 
our  great  estimate  of  the  deceased  as  a  historian,  orator 
and  philanthropist. 

Mr.  Winthrop  came  from  historical  stock,  his  father, 
Thomas  Lyndall  Winthrop  having  been  for  many  years 
President  of  the  Massachusetts  Historical  Society. 

In  his  varied  positions  as  member  of  the  Massachu- 
setts Legislature;  of  the  House  of  Representatives  and 
Senate  of  the  United  States;  as  President  of  the  Massa- 
chusetts Historical  Society  for  thirty  years  from  1855  to 
1885;  as  President  of  the  Bunker  Hill  Monument  Asso- 
ciation and  as  President  of  the  Trustees  of  the  Peabody 
Education  Fund  he  has  commemorated  the  lives  of 
more  than  one  hundred  and  fifty  of  the  leading  men  of 
our  own  country  and  many  of  his  great  contemporaries 
of  foreign  lands,  and  has  so  accomplished  the  difficult 
tasks  as  to  write  a  history  not  only  of  his  own  times  but 
of  our  entire  country  from  its  cradle  days  until  now. 
His  eloquent  pictures  of  the  great  men  of  this  country 
will  live  for  lovers  of  biography  and  history  as  long  as 
we  possess  a  national  flag  and  an  undivided  country. 

Like   his  predecessors  in   the  United   States  Senate, 

4  49 


50  ROBERT   C.  WINTHROP. 

Daniel  Webster  and  Edward  Everett,  his  whole  heart 
and  his  wonderful  eloquence  were  devoted  to  the  con- 
stitution of  his  country. 

Plymouth  chose  him  for  the  orator  of  the  day  on 
celebrating  the  250th  anniversary  of  the  Landing  of  the 
Pilgrims  on  Plymouth  Rock,  December  21,  1870. 

The  City  of  Boston  claimed  him  for  her  looth  anni- 
versary on  the  4th  of  July,  1876. 

The  City  of  New  York  chose  him  for  her  orator 
when  the  bronze  statue  of  Daniel  Webster  was  unvailed 
in  Central  Park  in  1876. 

The  Bunker  Hill  Association  selected  him  for  its 
orator  June  17,  1881,  when  Col.  Prescott  retook  the  hill 
where  he  led  the  most  thrilling  and  picturesque  battle 
since  Marathon  and  Thermopylae. 

The  United  States  pointed  to  him  as  the  foremost 
man  of  her  then  forty  millions  to  deliver  the  oration  at 
Yorktown  on  the  19th  of  October,  1881,  the  looth  anniver- 
sary of  the  final  triumph  of  the  patriot  army. 

He  was  the  chosen  orator  of  our  Government  to  lay 
the  corner  stone  of  the  Washington  Monument  at  our 
National  Capital  in  1848,  and  to  deliver  the  oration  at  its 
final  completion  in  1885 

In  these  most  conspicuous  and  trying  positions  Mr. 
Winthrop  so  acquitted  himself  as  to  answer  the 
demands  of  the  literary  critic,  the  precise  historian  and 
the  full-hearted  patriot. 

We  cannot  limit  our  eulogy  to  Mr.  Winthrop  as  an 
historian  and  orator,  for  he  was  no  less  conspicuous  as  a 
Christian  philantropist.  As  President  of  the  Boston 
Provident  Association  for  twehty-five  years,  he  exhibi- 
ted such  skill  in  organization  and  administration  as  to 
point  him  out  as  the  proper  executive  head  of  the  great 
Charitable  Trust  endowed  by  George  Peabody  in  1867, 
and  which  in  the  extent  and  magnitude  of  its  charities 
and  the  exalted  station  of  its  directors  eclipses  every- 
thing of  its  kind  in  history.     Therefore,  be  it 

Resolved,  that  a  copy  of  this  memorial  minute  be 
spread  upon  our  records,  and  that  copies  of  the  same  be 
sent  to  Massachusetts  Historical  Society,  to  the  Trustees 
of  the  Peabody  Education  Fund,  and  to  the  American 
Historical  Society. 


LIST   OF   MR.  WINTHROP'S    EULOGIES. 


DELIVERED      VOL.  PAGE 


Adams,  John  _ 

Adams,  John  Q 

Agassiz,  Louis 

Aiken,  Gov.   Wm 

Ames,  Seth 

Appleton,  Nathan 

Appleton,  Samuel    . . 

Appleton,  William 

Aspinwall,  Col.  Thos. 
Bacon,  Rev.  Leonard- 
Barnes,  Gen.  Jos.  K  __ 

Bartlett,  Wm.  S_- 

Bell,  Luther  V. ._.._. 

Bigelow,  Dr.  Jacob 

Bigelow,  ErastusB  .__ 

Bowdoin  James 

Bowdoin,  James. 

Brooks,  William  G... 
Bryant,  William  C  _ 
Budington,  William  I. 
Bulloch,  Alexander  H. 

Burton,  John  Hill 

Calhoun,  John  C 

Chadbourne,  Paul  A  _ 
Channing,  Wm.  E  ___ 
Chastellux,  Mqs.  de  .. 
Circourt,  Adolph  de__ 

Clav,  Henry 

Clifford,  Gov.  John  H. 

Crittenden,  J.  J 

Cushing,  Caleb 

Dana,  Richard  H 

Dante  ._ 

Davis,  George  T 

Davis,  Gov.  John 

Dearborn,  Henry 

Dearborn,  Henry  A.  S- 

Dexter,  George 

Dix,  John  A 

Emerson,  Geo.  B 

Everett,  Edward 

Felton,  Cornelius  C. 


1735- 

1826 

1767- 

1848 

1807- 

1873 

1806 

1805- 

1881 

1779- 

1 861 

1766- 

1853 

1786- 

1862 

1786- 

1876 

1802- 

1881 

I8I7- 

1883 

1809- 

1883 

1806- 

1862 

1787- 

1870 

I8I4- 

1879 

1727- 

1790 

1752- 

1811 

1807- 

1879 

1794- 

1878 

I8IS- 

1879 

I8I6- 

1882 

1809- 

1881 

1782- 

1850 

1824- 

1883 

1780- 

1842 

1734- 

1788 

1800- 

1879 

1777- 

i8t52 

1809- 

1876 

1787- 

1863 

1800- 

1879 

I8I5- 

1882 

1265- 

1321 

I8I0- 

1877 

1787- 

1854 

1751- 

1829 

i783- 

i8si 

_ 

1883 

1798- 

1879 

1797- 

1881 

1794- 

1865 

1807- 

1862 

Dec.  16,  1873 
Feb.  24,  1848 
April  16,1874 

Sept.  8,  1881 
Aug.  8,  1861 
Sept.  17,  i8f;5 
Feb.  18,  1862 
Oct.  12,  1876 
July  12,  1882 
Oct.  3,  1883 
Dec.  13,  1883 
Mar.  13,  1862 
Feb.  13,  1879 
Dec.  II,  1879 
Sept.  5,  1849 
Sept.  5,  1849 
Jan.  9,  1879 
June  13,  1878 
Dec.  II,  1879 
Feb.  9,  1882 
Sept.  8,  1881 
April  I,  i8i;o 
Mar.  8,  1883 
April  18,1880 
May  13,  1859 
Jan.  8,  1880 
Aug.  1879 
Jan.  13,  1876 
Aug.  13,  1863 
Jan.  9,  1879 
Jan.  12,  1882 
May  II,  1865 
Oct.  II,  1877 
April  26, 1854 

April  10, 1884 

April  10, 1884 
Jan.  10,  1884 
May  8,  1879 
Mar.  10,  1881 
Jan.  30,  1865 
Mar.  13,  1862 


293 
614 
312 

280 

502 

222 

516 

432 

372 

452 

474 

515 

23 

III 

90 

90 

18 

510 

381 
281 

651 

4:1 
131 
485 
116 

39 
342 
558 

19 
372 
664 

477 
179 

319 

495 
496 
481 

34 
229 

653 

517 


SI 


52 


ROBERT  C  WINTHROP. 


TIME 

DELIVERED      VOL 

PAGE 

Fillmore,  Millard 

I 800-1 874 

Mar.  12,  1874 

3 

307 

Folsom,  Chas 

1 794-1872 

Dec.  12,  1872 

3 

186 

Frothingham,  Nath'l. 

1793-1870 

April  14,1870 

3 

66 

Frothingham,  Richr'd 

181 2-1880 

Feb.  12,  1880 

4 

125 

Goddard,  Delano  A  __ 

-1882 

July  12,  1882 

4 

373 

Graham,  William  A__ 

1801-1875 

Oct.   6,    1875 

3 

326 

Grant,  Gen.  U.  S 

1822-1885 

Oct.    7,    1885 

4 

574 

Gray,  John  C  .._ 

1 793-1 88 1 

Mar.  10,  1881 

4 

227 

Grigsby,  Hugh  Blair. 

1806-1881 

May  12,  1881 

4 

235 

Grinnell,  Joseph  _. . 

1789-1885 

Jan.  13,  1876 

3 

344 

Hancock,  John 

1737-1793 

Sept.  17,  1856 

2 

273 

Haven,  Samuel  F 

I 806-1 88 I 

Sept.  8,  1881 

4 

281 

Hillard,  Geo.  S 

1808--1879 

Feb.  13,  1879 

4 

26 

Hudson,  Chas 

I 795-1 881 

May  12,  1881 

4 

233 

/ones,  John  Winter  _  . 

1791-1881 

Sept.  8,  1881 

4 

281 

'Kennedy,  John  P 

1795-1870 

Sept.  8,  1870 

3 

69 

King,  Daniel  P 

1801-1850 

July  27,  1850 

I 

697 

King,  Rufus 

1755-1827 

Nov.  20,  1854 

2 

200 

Knox,Maj-Gen.  Henry 

I 750-1 806 

May  27,  1857 

2 

348 

Laboulaye,  Edw.  R.  L. 

1811-1883 

June  14,  1883 

4 

425 

Lafayette,  Gen 

1 757-1834 

Oct.  19,  1881 

4 

333 

Langdon,  Elwyn  Alf'd 

1804-1883 

April  10,1884 

4 

494 

Lawrence,  Abbott 

1 792-1855 

Aug.  20,  1855 

2 

210 

Lenox,  James 

I 800-1 880 

Mar.  II,  1880 

4 

128 

Lincoln,  Abraham  . 

I 809-1 865 

April  29,1865 

2 

661 

Livermore,  Geo     .. . 

I1809-1865 

Sept.  14, 1865 

2 

667 

Lowell,  John  A 

1 797-1881 

Nov.  10,  1881 

4 

364 

Luther,  Martin   

I 483- I 546 

Nov.  10,  1883 

4 

467 

Lyman,  Theodore  _._ 

I 792-1 849 

Oct.  24,  1885 

4 

608 

Lyndhurst,  Lord 

1772-1863 

Nov.  12,  1863 

2 

567 

Manning,  Thomas  C._ 

-1887 

Oct.    3,   1888 

Martin,  M.  Henri 

I 810-1883 

Jan.  10,  1884 

4 

479 

Mcllvaine,  Bishop  ___ 

1 799-1 873 

July  16,  1873 

3 

255 

Mendelssohn 

1809-1847 

May  21,  1857 

2 

341 

Metcalf,  Theron 

1 784-1 875 

Dec.  9,   1875 

3 

341 

Mignet,  Francis  A  .._ 

1 796- 1 884 

April  10,1884 

4 

487 

Miles,  James  B 

1822-1875 

Dec.  9,   1875 

3 

340 

Minot,  William 

1 783-1 874 

Mar.  12,  1874 

3 

302 

Motley,  John  Lothrop 

1814-1877 

June  14,  1877 

3 

467 

Newell,  William..... 

I 803-1 88 I 

Nov.  10,  1881 

4 

364 

Palfrey,  Dr.  John  G.. 

1796-1881 

Mav  12,  1881 

4 

238 

Parker,  Francis  E 

Feb.  II,  1886 

4 

586 

Peabody,  George  

1 795-1 869 

Feb.  8,   1870 

3 

36 

Perkins,  Thomas  H  ._ 

1 764-1 854 

Oct.    I  8'54 

4 

575 

Phillips,  John  C 

1839-1885 

Mar.  12,1885 

4 

555 

Preble,  Geo.  H. 

1816-1885 

Mar.  12,  1885 

4 

555 

Prescott,  Col.  William 

1726-1795 

June  17,  1881 

4 

253 

Prescott,  William  H.. 

I 796-1 859 

Feb.   I,  1859 

2 

405 

Quincy,  Edmund 

I 808-1 877 

June  14,  1877 

3 

465 

ROBERT  C.  WINTHROP. 


53 


Quincj,  Eliza  S_ 

Quincj,  Josiah 

Quincy,  Josiah,  Jr   . 

Sears,  David 

Sears,  Barnas 

Sparks,  Jared 

Salisbury,  Stephen 

Seward,  William  H  __ 
Somerby,  Horatio  G  _ 

Stanhope,  Earl ._. 

Stanley,  Dean  A.  P__ 

Sumner,  Chas 

Taney,  Roger  B 

Taylor,  Zachary 

Taylor,  Richard 

Thayer,  Nathaniel 

Thomas,  Benj.  F 

Ticknor,  George 

Tuttle,  Chas.  Wesley. 
Upham,  Charles  W  _- 
Verplanck,  Gulian  C  - 
Visconti,  Baron  L.  T.J 
Waite,  Morrison  R__. 
Walker,  Pres.  James  _ 
((  ii  (< 

Warren,  Judge  Chas.H 
Washburne,  Emory  __ 
Washington,  Geo 


Watson,  Samuel 
Webster,  Daniel 


Wetmore,  Samuel... 

Wilson,  Henry. 

*Winthrop,  Benj.  R. 

Woods,  Leonard 

Wyman,  Jeffries 


TIME 

1 798-1 884 

I 744-1 775 
1 772-1 864 
1787-1871 
I 802-1 880 
1 789-1 866 
1 798-1884 
1800-1872 
I 805-1 872 
1805-1875 
1815-1881 
1811-1874 
1 777-1864 
I 784-1 850 
1826-1879 
I 808-1 883 
1813-1878 
1791-1871 
I 829- I 88 I 
I 802-1 875 
I 796-1 870 
1791-1853 
1816-1888 
I 794-1 874 


I 799-1 877 
1 732-1 799 


-1877 
I 782-1 852 


1812-1885 
181 2-1875 
I 804-1 879 
I 707-1 807 
1814-1874 


DELIVERED      VOL 

Feb.  14,  1884 
Dec.  21,  1853 
July  14,  1864 
Feb.  2,  1881 
Feb.  2,  1881 
April  3,  1866 
Oct.  9,  1884 
Dec.  12,  1872 
Dec.  12,  1872 
Jan.  13,  1876 
Sept.  8,  1881 
Mar.  12,  1874 
Mar.  13,  1873 
June  26, 1872 
Oct.  1,  1879 
Mar.  8,  1883 
Oct.  10,  1878 
Feb.  9,  1871 


Sept.  8,  1881 
Oct.  14,  1875 
April  14,1870 
Jan.  24,  1881 
Oct.  3,  1888 
Oct.  14,  1875 
Feb.  18,  1878  I  3 
Oct.  14,  1875  I  3 
April  11,1877  1  3 
July  4,  1848  !  I 
May  27,  1857  2 
June  17,  1857 
Feb.  22,  1863 
Feb.  22,  1873 
Feb.  22,  1885 
Oct.  3,  1877 
Feb.  15,  1837  ^  I 
May  21,  1857  \  2 
Nov.  25, 1876 
Jan.  18,  1882 
Oct.  7,  1885 
Dec.  9,  1875 
Sept.  II,  1879 
Jan.  9,  1879 
Feb.  18,  1878 


PAGE 

4B5 
140 

584 

206 
670 

190 

187 

357 
283 
309 
245 
173 
90 
412 

524 
140 
279 

331 

64 

199 

330 
500 
330 

457 
70 

346 
351 
553 
236 

525 
475 
216 

335 
436 
375 
573 
340 
85 
22 
502 


*Gov.  John,  Life  and  Letters,  1864-1867,  2  vols. 

This  list  ends  in  1886.  Later  Eulogies  are  scattered 
through  the  published  proceedings  of  the  different 
societies  of  which  Mr.  Winthrop  was  a  member. 


54  ROBERT  C.  WINTHROP. 


MR.   WINTHROP'S    ESTIMATE    OF    ABRAHAM 
LINCOLN. 

(Vol.  II.  66i.) 
Beyond  all  doubt  the  life  of  President  Lincoln  was  a 
thousand  fold  the  most  precious  life  in  our  whole  land; 
and  there  are  few  of  us  I  think  who  would  not  willingly 
have  rescued  it  at  the  risk,  or  even  at  the  sacrifice  of  our 
own.  The  cheerful  courage,  the  shrewd  sagacity — the 
earnest  zeal,  the  imperturbable  good  nature,  the  untiring 
fidelity  to  duty,  the  ardent  devotion  to  the  Union,  the 
firm  reliance  upon  God,  which  he  has  displayed  during 
his  whole  administration;  and  the  eminent  moderation 
and  magnanimity,  both  toward  political  opponents  and 
public  enemies,  which  he  has  manifested  since  his 
recent  and  triumphant  reelection,  have  won  for  him  a 
measure  of  regard  and  of  respect  and  of  affection  such 
as  no  other  man  of  our  age  has  ever  enjoyed. 


ROBERT   C.  WINTHROP.  55 


IN    RE   TH^E    DEARBORNS. 

Boston,  2  April,  1884. 
Dear  Mr.  Good-win: — I  thank  you  sincerely  for  the 
copy  of  your  "Dearborns,"  which  you  have  kindly  sent 
me,  and  still  more  for  the  discoiyse  itself.  I  have  read 
it  with  great  interest  and  gratification,  and  I  cordially  con- 
gratulate you  on  so  successful  a  production.  If  you 
could  send  me  another  copy,  addressed  on  the  cover  or 
fly  leaf  to  the  Massachusetts  Historical  Society  from 
yourself,  I  should  take  pleasure  in  presenting  it  publicly 
at  their  annual  meeting  on  the  loth  inst.  A  copy  should 
go  to  the  library  of  Bowdoin  College.  I  rejoice  that  the 
names  of  these  good  old  friends  of  my  boyhood  and  early 
manhood  are  so  pleasantly  and  deservedly  reviewed. 
Yours  truly, 

ROBT.  C.  WiNTHROP. 

In  presenting  the  book  to  the  Massachusetts  Histori- 
cal Society,  Mr.  Winthrop  said  (Vol.  IV.,  page  595),  I 
must  not  conclude  these  introductory  remarks  without 
presenting  to  our  library,  in  the  name  of  Daniel 
Goodwin  Esq.,  of  Chicago,  a  very  interesting  and  notable 
memoir  of  "  The  Dearborns," — a  commemorative  dis- 
course delivered  before  the  Chicago  Historical  Society, 
on  the  eightieth  anniversary  of  the  occupation  of 
Fort  Dearborn  and  the  first  settlement  of  Chicago,  in 
December  last.  It  gives  an  excellent  account  of  the 
career  and  character  of  General  Henry  Dearborn,  and 
of  his  son  General  Henry  Alexander  Scammell  Dear- 
born, both  of  whom  were  long  conspicuous  in  the  history 
of  our  country  and  our  commonwealth;  and  it  is  illus- 
trated by  portraits  of  them  both.  The  father  was  a  gal- 
lant officer  of  the  Revolution  from  Bunker  Hill  to  York- 
town,  and  afterwards  Secretary  of  War  and  Commander- 
in-Chief  of  the  United  States  Army.  The  son  was  Col- 
lector of  the  Customs  in  this  city,  a  member  of  Congress 
from  Norfolk,  first  President  of  the  Massachusetts  Horti- 


56  ROBERT   C.  WINTHROP. 

cultural  Society,  and  prominently  associated  with  the 
erection  of  the  Bunker  Hill  Monument  and  the  estab- 
lishment of  the  Mount  Auburn  cemetery. 

Our  thanks  are  due  and  will  be  returned,  with  the 
sanction  of  the  Society  to  Mr.  Goodwin,  for  so  just  and 
admirable  a  tribute  to  these  patriotic  and  public-spirited 
men,  so  long  known  and  honored  in  our  community. 


ROBERT   C.  WINTHROP.  57 


IN  RE  EDWIN  C.  LARNED. 

Those  who  have  read  Mr.  Larned's  great  argu- 
ment in  the  Fugitive  Slave  case  will  be  inter- 
ested to  read  Mr.  Winthrop's  speeches  in  favor  of 
a  jury  trial,  and  the  right  of  the  slave  to  the  writ  of 
habeas  corpus  and  against  the  extension  of  slav- 
ery, or  slave  territory,  and  in  favor  of  the  admis- 
sion of  California  under  a  constitution  prohibiting 
slavery.  The  world  is  accustomed  to  think  of 
Mr.  Winthrop  as  a  conservative  and  of  Mr. 
Larned  as  radical,  but  the  sentiments,  and  princi- 
ples, and  moral  convictions  of  the  two  were  identi- 
cal. The  two  following  letters  will  explain 
themselves: 

Boston,   20  April,  1886. 
Dear    Mr.    Goodivin: — Your     handsome    volume,    in 
memory  of  Edwin  C.  Larned,  came  this  morning. 

I  desire  to  acknowledge  it  gratefully  without  delay. 
I  am  just  breaking  up  my  winter  home  with  a  view  to 
returning  to  Brookline  after  a  journey  of  three  or  four 
weeks.  I  must  therefore  postpone  doing  justice  to  your 
memoir  until  I  am  established  in  summer  quarters.  I 
have  read  enough  of  it,  however,  to  feel  sure  that  I 
shall  be  interested  in  reading  the  whole. 
Believe  me,  with  kind  regards 

Yours  truly, 

RoBT.  C.  Winthrop. 

Brookline,  Mass.,  6  July,  1886. 
Dear  Mr.  Goodwin: — I  have  at  last  found  an  hour  in 
my  summer  retirement  to  read  the  book  you  kindly  sent 
me  many  weeks  ago,  *'  In  Memory  of  Edwin  C.  Larned." 
I  can  now  thank  you  for  it  intelligently.  Your  address 
is  admirable,  and  so  is  that  of  Bishop  Harris;  the  whole 


58  ROBERT   C.  WINTHROP. 

volume  illustrates  a  character  of  great  energy.  The 
argument  in  the  Fugitive  Slave  rescue  is  strong  and 
brilliant,  and  exhibits  power  and  eloquence.  I  had 
never  known  Mr.  Larned  and  am  not  sure  that  I  had 
ever  heard  of  him  until  I  read  this  volume.  But  I  shall 
remember  him  henceforth  as  one  whom  it  must  have 
been  a  privilege  to  know,  and  whose  memory  it  must  be 
a  pleasure  to  you  to  recall  and  illustrate.  Accept  my 
thanks  for  the  volume  and  believe  me. 

Very  truly  yours, 

ROBT.  C.  WiNTHROP. 


ROBERT   C.  WINTHROP.  59 


LETTERS. 

The  following  letter  was  written  by  Mr.  Winthrop 
after  perusal  of  the  foregoing  essay  prepared  for  the 
Chicago  Literary  Club. 

Brookline,  21  Nov.,  1888. 

Dear  Mr.  Goodwin: — You  have  been  at  great  pains  in 
describing  my  career  and  I  thank  you  for  all  your  kind 
and  complimentary  expressions.  Your  list  of  the  persons 
I  have  noticed  atgreater  or  less  length  has  come  duly,  and 
I  return  it  with  the  addition  of  three  names,  Judge  Man- 
ning of  Louisiana,  Chief  Justice  Waite  of  Ohio,  and 
Gov.  Wm.  Aiken  of  South  Carolina.  These  tributes  are 
in  our  two  last  serials  of  the  Peabody  proceedings,  pub- 
lished since  my  fourth  volume  was  made  up.  The  list 
is  really  a  portentous  one,  reminding  me  forcibly  of  the 
great  number  of  friends  who  have  passed  away  since  I 
began  my  public  or  quasi  public  life.  All  of  them  Avere 
associated  with  me  either  in  Congress  or  in  the  Histori- 
cal Society,  or  on  the  Peabody  Board,  and  my  notices  of 
them  have  been  in  the  way  of  duty. 

You  ask  about  my  portraits.  Eastman  Johnson  took  a 
crayon  of  me  when  I  was  early  in  Congress,  and  when  he 
was  just  beginning  his  career  as  an  artist.  Healy  painted 
a  kit-cat  portrait  of  me  in  1846;  Huntington  of  New 
York  painted  a  large  family  portrait  of  me  in  1870.  He 
also  painted  the  full  length  of  me  in  1881-2,  which  is  in 
the  Speaker's  corridor  at  Washington,  presented  by  citi- 
zens of  Massachusetts  in  recognition  of  my  Yorktown 
oration.  Huntington  has  since  painted  a  third  original 
of  me  for  the  Historical  Society,  of  Massachusetts,  on 
my  withdrawal  from  thirty  years  presidency  in  1885. 
There  is  a  medallion  of  me  by  Ball  Hughes  in  1841 
and  a  lithograph  by  a  celebrated  French  artist  taken  in 
Paris,  in  1847. 


6o  ROBERT   C.  WINTHROP. 

Accept    my     renewed     acknowledgements     of    the 
trouble  you  have  taken  in  reviewing  my  record  and  for 
the  compliments  you  have  paid  me  and  believe  me. 
Very  truly  yours, 

ROBT.  C.  WiNTHROP. 

Boston,  March  21,  1889. 
Dear  Mr.  Goodwin: — I  thank  you  for  sending  me  the 
little  volume  of  sermons  by  our  lamented  friend  Bishop 
Harris.  Gov.  Baldwin  sent  me  a  copy  of  his  Bohlen  lec- 
tures some  years  ago,  and  I  have  known  him  personally 
and  have  heard  him  preach  at  our  Trinity  Church.  He 
was  one  of  our  ablest  and  best  bishops,  and  he  has  been 
called  higher  too  soon  for  every  one  but  himself.  I 
shall  read  these  select  sermons  from  time  to  time  with 
great  interest.  Believe  me,  with  kind  regards  to  Mrs. 
Goodwin,  Vours  very  truly, 

ROBT.  C.  WiNTHROP. 

P.S.  I  send  you  in  a  large  envelope  two  of  my  latest 
productions:  one  a  long  notice  of  Washington,  the  other 
a  shorter  notice  of  John  Winthrop.  I  prepared  them  at 
the  request  of  the  editors  of  Appleton's  New  Cyclopedia  of 
American  Biography — just  published — the  publishers 
sent  me  a  few  oversheets  containing  both  articles,  and 
I  send  you  one  of  each. 

Brookline,  Mass.,  May  22,  1890. 

Dear  Mr.  Goodwin: — I  returned  home  recently  to  find 
my  table  crowded  with  books,  letters  and  pamphlets 
which  had  accumulated  during  a  month's  absence.  I 
had  been  at  New  York,  Washington  and  Richmond; 
and  time  had  taken  the  opportunity  to  add  another  unit 
to  the  number  of  my  years. 

I  avail  myself  of  a  moment's  leisure  to  thank  you  for 
the  kind  expressions  of  yowx  letter  on  my  birthday. 

I  have  entered  my  82d  in  better  condition  than  I  had 
any  right  or  reason  to  anticipate.  But  I  am  glad  to  be 
quietly  established  in  my  summer  home,  where  I  can 
•«  rest  and  be  thankful."  I  was  grieved  to  see  the 
announcement  of   Wirt    Dexter's  death.     He   spent   an 


ROBERT   C.  WINTHROP.  6l 

an  hour  with  me  at  Beverly  farms  last  summer,  while  I 
was  passing  a  few  days  with  my  son.     I  thought  he  was 
good  for  twenty  years  more  of  life  and  usefulness. 
Believe  me,  with  kind  regards  to  your  wife, 
Yours  very  truly, 

ROBT.  C.  WiNTHROP. 


62  ROBERT   C.  WINTHROP. 


Jy>-/^M/ 


MR.  WINTHR6P'S  ADDRESS  UPON  THE  FLAG 
OF  OUR  UNION. 

When  I  sent  my  essay  to  Mr.  Winthrop  in  Novem- 
ber, 1888,  I  asked  him  if  there  was  any  other  point  in 
his  career  in  which  he  would  rather  be  remembered 
than  the  memorable  one  alluded  to  in  my  peroration  ;  with 
the  exquisite  courtsey  which  never  failed  him,  and  which 
Dr.  Ellis  says  he  never  saw  omitted  in  a  friendly  inter- 
course of  more  than  half  a  century,  Mr.  Winthrop 
gave  me  to  understand  that  my  choice  was  unexception 
able,  but  still  that  his  heart  preferred  one  other  and  that 
was  **my  utterances  on  the  'Flag  of  theUnion,'  in  con- 
cluding my  speech  on  Boston  common  when  presenting 
a  United  States  flag  to  Col.  Wilson's  regiment  on  its 
departure  for  the  war  in  October,  1861." 

Let  us  learn  then  to  recall  and  remember  him  as  he 
himself  would  most  love  to  be  remembered  and  let  his 
own  eloquent  words  close  this  chapter  of  our  lives. 

The  tall  and  graceful  orator  was  standing  on  Boston 
common  in  sight  and  almost  within  hearing  of  the 
houses  and  streets  where  he  and  six  generations  of  his 
patriot  sires  had  lived  since  1630 — overhead  were  waving 
the  old  elms  under  which  he  and  his  ancestors  had 
walked  and  played  since  before  the  Revolution — before 
him  was  a  regiment  of  young  men  who  had  grown  up 
in  the  streets  of  Boston  within  sight  of  the  great  monu- 
ment, the  old  State  House,  the  old  South  Church,  all  of 
them  going  out  to  meet  death  and  many  of  them  to  fall 
and  die  and  never  more  to  return.  They  were  led  by 
Henrv  Wilson,  who  left  the  United  States  Senate  for  the 
battle  field  and  who  was  afterward  elected  vice-president 
of  the  Union  with  the  immortal  1^*nc?eh*-.  Thus  environed 
and  thus  placed  as  he  should  be  sometime  in  enduring 


ROBERT   C.  WINTHROP.  63 

bronze,  our  great  and  departed  orator  spoke  the  words 
he  would  have  his  countrymen  take  home  to  their 
hearts. 

"I  have  said  enough  and  more  than  enough  to  mani- 
fest the  spirit  in  which  this  flag  is  now  committed  to 
your  charge.  It  is  the  National  ensign,  pure  and 
simple;  dearer  to  all  our  hearts  at  this  moment  as  we 
lift  it  to  the  gale  and  see  no  other  sign  of  hope  upon  the 
storm-cloud  which  rolls  and  rattles  above  it,  save  that 
which  is  reflected  from  its  own  radiant  hues;  dearer 
to  us  all  than  ever  it  was  before,  while  gilded  by  the 
sunshine  of  prosperity  and  playing  with  the  zephyrs 
of  peace.  It  will  speak  for  itself,  far  more  eloquently 
than  I  can  speak  for  it. 

Behold  it!  listen  to  it!  Every  star  has  a  tongue; 
every  stripe  is  articulate.  There  is  no  language  or 
speech  where  their  voices  are  not  heard.  There's 
magic  in  the  web  of  it.  It  has  an  answer  for  every 
question  of  duty.  It  has  a  solution  for  every  doubt  and 
every  perplexity.  It  has  a  word  of  good  cheer  for  every 
hour  of  gloom  or  of  despondency. 

Behold  it!  Listen  to  it!  It  speaks  of  earlier  and  of 
later  struggles.  It  speaks  of  victories  and  sometimes  of 
reverses,  on  the  sea  and  on  the  land.  It  speaks  of 
patriots  and  heroes  among  the  living  and  among  the 
dead  and  of  him,  the  first  and  greatest  of  them  all, 
around  whose  consecrated  ashes  this  unnatural  and 
abhorrent  strife  has  so  long  been  raging.  But  before 
all  and  above  all  other  associations  and  memories  — 
whether  of  glorious  men,  of  glorious  deeds,  or  glorious 
places — its  voice  is  ever  of  Union  and  Liberty,  of 
the    constitution  and    the    laws. 

Behold  it!  Listen  to  it.  Let  it  tell  the  story  of 
its  birth  to  these  gallant  volunteers  as  they  march 
beneath  its  folds  by  day  or  repose  beneath  its  sen- 
tinel stars  by  night.  Let  it  recall  to  them  the  strange 
eventful  history  of  its  rise  and  progress;  let  it  re- 
hearse to  them  the  wondrous  tale  of  its  trials  and  its 
triumphs,  in   peace    as  well  as  in  war;    and  whatever 


64  ROBERT   C.  WINTHROP. 

else  may  happen  to  it  or  to  them  it  will  never  be  sur- 
rendered to  rebels;  never  be  ignominiously  struck  to* 
treason ;  nor  ever  be  prostituted  to  any  unworthy 
and  un-Christian  purpose  of  revenge,  depredation  or 
rapine.  And  may  a  merciful  God  cover  the  head  of 
each  one  of  its  brave  defenders  in  the  hour  of  battle." 


14  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 

LOAN  DEPT. 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below,  or 

on  the  date  to  which  renewed. 

Renewed  books  are  subject  to  immediate  recall. 

JAN  2  6  1967  7  6 

RECEIVEC 

,1AM  9  4 'R7 -11  C 

iw 

LOAN  DEP  1 

^g.^^'^vifsr.?^^^         u.iv?SS^-'= 

YC  50493 


M180665 


THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  CAUFORNIA  LIBRARY 


